Pharmaceutics & Novel Drug Delivery Systems

Pharmaceutical Chemistry is the study of drug design to optimize pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, and synthesis of new drug molecules. Pharmaceutical Chemistry is a branch of chemistry that deals with the chemical, biochemical and pharmacological aspects of drugs. It includes synthesis/isolation, identification, structural elucidation, structural modification, structural activity relationship (SAR) studies, and study of the chemical characteristics, biochemical changes after drug administration and their pharmacological effects as well as analysis of drugs. In more simple words it is more broader than medicinal chemistry in its application also in the fields of analysis, identification, as well as, structural elucidation of drugs.

Drug design, often referred to as rational drug design or simply rational design, is the inventive process of finding new medications based on the knowledge of a biological target. The drug is most commonly an organic small molecule that activates or inhibits the function of a biomolecule such as a protein, which in turn results in a therapeutic benefit to the patient. In the most basic sense, drug design involves the design of molecules that are complementary in shape and charge to the biomolecular target with which they interact and therefore will bind to it. Drug design frequently but not necessarily relies on computer modeling techniques. This type of modeling is sometimes referred to as computer-aided drug design. Finally, drug design that relies on the knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of the biomolecular target is known as structure-based drug design. In addition to small molecules, biopharmaceuticals and especially therapeutic antibodies are an increasingly important class of drugs and computational methods for improving the affinity, selectivity, and stability of this protein-based therapeutics have also been developed.

Pharmacokinetics is currently defined as the study of the time course of drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion. Clinical pharmacokinetics is the application of pharmacokinetic principles to the safe and effective therapeutic management of drugs in an individual patient. Primary goals of clinical pharmacokinetics include enhancing efficacy and decreasing toxicity of a patient’s drug therapy. The development of strong correlations between drug concentrations and their pharmacologic responses has enabled clinicians to apply pharmacokinetic principles to actual patient situations. Pharmacodynamics refers to the relationship between drug concentration at the site of action and the resulting effect, including the time course and intensity of therapeutic and adverse effects. The effect of a drug present at the site of action is determined by that drug’s binding with a receptor.

Pharmaceutics is the study of relationships between preformulation, pharmaceutical formulation, delivery, disposition and clinical response. The inherent instability nature of a new drug will alter its desired form into undesired form when presented in a suitable dosage form with the excipient/s upon storage. NDDS conference will discuss on early approaches, present scenario and future prospects of preformulation events. There are more than 1400 sustained or controlled release drugs have been approved all over the world. Pharmaceutical conferences discuss the state-of-art technology being applied and involve advances in formulation studies. 

Drug manufacturing is the process of industrial-scale synthesis of pharmaceutical drugs by pharmaceutical companies. The process of drug manufacturing can be broken down into a series of unit operations, such as milling, granulation, coating, tablet pressing, and others

Size reduction is a fundamental unit operation having important applications in pharmacy. It helps in improving solubility and bioavailability, reducing toxicity, enhancing release and providing better formulation opportunities for drugs. In most of the cases, size reduction is limited to micron size range, for example, various pharmaceutical dosage forms like powder, emulsion, suspension etc. Drugs in the nanometer size range enhance performance in a variety of dosage forms. Major advantages of nano sizing include (i) increased surface area, (ii) enhanced solubility, (iii) increased rate of dissolution, (iv) increased oral bioavailability, (v) more rapid onset of therapeutic action, (vi) less amount of dose required, (vii) decreased fed/fasted variability, and (viii) decreased patient-to-patient variability. Pharmaceutical nanotechnology has provided more fine-tuned diagnosis and focused treatment of disease at a molecular level. Pharmaceutical nanotechnology is most innovative and highly specialized field, which will revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry in near future. Pharmaceutical nanotechnology presents revolutionary opportunities to fight against many diseases. It helps in detecting the antigen associated with diseases such as cancer, diabetes mellitus, neurodegenerative diseases, as well as detecting the microorganisms and viruses associated with infections. It is expected that in next 10 years market will be flooded with nanotechnology devised medicine.

Nanoparticles (NPs) occur naturally and have been in existence for thousands of years as products of combustion and cooking of food. Nanomaterials differ significantly from other materials due to the following two major principal factors: the increased surface area and quantum effects. These factors can enhance properties such as reactivity, strength, electrical characteristics, and in vivo behavior. As the particle size decreases, a greater proportion of atoms are found at the surface compared to inside. An NP has a much greater surface area per unit mass compared with larger particles, leading to greater reactivity. In tandem with surface area effects, quantum effects can begin to dominate the properties of matter as size is reduced to the nanoscale. These can affect the optical, electrical, and magnetic behavior of materials. There in vivo behavior can be from increased absorption to high toxicity of nanomaterial’s. 

Smart drug delivery is a method of delivering medication to a patient in a manner that increases the concentration of the medication in some parts of the body relative to others. This means of delivery is largely founded on nanomedicine, which plans to employ nanoparticle-mediated drug delivery in order to combat the downfalls of conventional drug delivery. These nanoparticles would be loaded with drugs and targeted to specific parts of the body where there is solely diseased tissue, thereby avoiding interaction with healthy tissue. The goal of targeted drug delivery systems is to prolong, localize, target and have a protected drug interaction with the diseased tissue. The conventional drug delivery system is the absorption of the drug across a biological membrane, whereas the targeted release system releases the drug in a dosage form. The advantages to the targeted release system is the reduction in the frequency of the dosages taken by the patient, having a more uniform effect of the drug, reduction of drug side-effects, and reduced fluctuation in circulating drug levels. The disadvantage of the system is high cost, which makes productivity more difficult and the reduced ability to adjust the dosages.

Nanomedicine is simply the nanotechnology applications in a healthcare setting and the majority of benefits that have already been seen involve the use of nanoparticles to improve the behavior of drug substances and in drug delivery. Today, nanomedicine conferences are used globally to improve the treatments and lives of patients suffering from a range of disorders including ovarian and breast cancer, kidney disease, fungal infections, elevated cholesterol, menopausal symptoms, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, asthma and emphysema. Nanomedicine has the potential to develop radical new therapies based on an unprecedented control over both intracellular processes and the extracellular environment at the nanometer scale. To create precise solutions for intricate medical challenges in the area of wound healing, tissue regeneration and mitochondrial disease physical scientists, medical doctors, and industrial partners, work closely in the Radboud Nanomedicine Alliance. The National Nanotechnology Initiative expects new commercial applications in the pharmaceutical industry that may include advanced delivery systems, new therapies, and in vivo imaging.

A biomaterial is any substance that has been engineered to interact with biological systems for a medical purpose - either a therapeutic (treat, augment, repair or replace a tissue function of the body) or a diagnostic one. Biomaterials conferences can be derived either from nature or synthesized in the laboratory using a variety of chemical approaches utilizing metallic components, polymers, ceramics or composite materials. They are often used and/or adapted for a medical application, and thus comprise whole or part of a living structure or biomedical device which performs, augments, or replaces a natural function. Such functions may be benign, like being used for a heart valve, or may be bioactive with a more interactive functionality such as hydroxy-apatite coated hip implants. Biomaterials are also used every day in dental applications, surgery, and drug delivery. For example, a construct with impregnated pharmaceutical products can be placed into the body, which permits the prolonged release of a drug over an extended period of time. A biomaterial may also be an autograft, allograft or xenograft used as a transplant material.

Vaccine is a material that induces an immunologically mediated resistance to a disease but not necessarily an infection. Vaccines are generally composed of killed or attenuated organisms or subunits of organisms or DNA encoding antigenic proteins of pathogens. Sub-unit vaccines though exceptionally selective and specific in reacting with antibodies often fail to show such reactions in circumstances such as shifts in epitopic identification center of antibody and are poorly immunogenic. Delivery of antigens from oil-based adjuvants such as Freunds adjuvant lead to a reduction in the number of doses of vaccine to be administered but due to toxicity concerns like inductions of granulomas at the injection site, such adjuvants are not widely used.

In this session we will focus on medical devices designed for drug delivery conferences through the pulmonary and nasal routes. These routes are of interest for local delivery, as in asthma, but also for rapid delivery of drugs to the system circulation and direct delivery to the central nervous system. Devices that account for specific anatomical and physiological features of the intranasal and pulmonary routes will be featured. Drug delivery devices are specialized tools for the delivery of a drug or therapeutic agent via a specific route of administration. Such devices are used as part of one or more medical treatments. Many in the industry have long felt overly burdened by what they consider to be an unnecessarily complex approval process. Critics claim it impedes innovation and delays the availability of better health care. In order to help innovators bring health care to the public Pharmaceutica 2024 hosts drug delivery conferences throughout the year.

Biologics are medicines made from living cells through highly complex manufacturing processes and must be handled and administered under carefully monitored conditions. Biologics are used to prevent, treat, diagnose, or cure a variety of diseases including cancer, chronic kidney disease, autoimmune disorders, and infectious diseases. Euro Biosimilars is exactly what its name implies — it is a biologic that is “similar” to another biologic drug already approved by the FDA. Under U.S. law, a biosimilar is approved based on a showing that it is “highly similar” to an FDA-approved biological product, known as a reference product. It may not have any clinically meaningful differences in terms of safety and effectiveness from the reference product.

Pharmaceutical analysis is a process or a sequence of processes to identify and/or quantify a substance or drug, the components of a pharmaceutical solution or mixture or the determination of the structures of chemical compounds used in the formulations of pharmaceutical product. Analytical techniques conferences mainly used for the separation of the components from the mixture and for the determination of the structure of the compounds.

Pharmaceutical analysis is a process or a sequence of processes to identify and/or quantify a substance or drug, the components of a pharmaceutical solution or mixture or the determination of the structures of chemical compounds used in the formulations of pharmaceutical product. Analytical techniques conferences mainly used for the separation of the components from the mixture and for the determination of the structure of the compounds.