Development of novel and industrially-relevant liquid pharmaceutical formulations to enable paediatric combination drug therapy

两种或多种功能分子的共包封和共递送是一个新兴的学术和工业研究领域，具有广泛的应用。更具体地说，制药行业在这一领域进行了广泛的研究，以开发固定剂量组合（FDC）药物来治疗需要多种活性药物成分（api）的疾病。液体制剂提供剂量灵活性，同时满足特定患者群体（如儿科）的剂型需求。此外，由于乳剂具有多相特性、易于形成以及在目前市场上许多结构化液体/半液体产品中的应用，因此它是一种具有吸引力的微结构，可用于功能分子的封装/控制递送。在这个项目中，将探索从制药相关材料制造新型亚微米颗粒的加工和配方路线。制造的颗粒将用于封装与儿科相关的API，并且将开发不同的策略来触发和优化API释放，同时设计促进其皮克林功能的方法。简单的o/w乳剂将被用于优化二级活性成分的包封和释放。一旦对单一原料药从颗粒或液滴中封装和释放的机制有了更好的了解，这两者将结合起来研究两种原料药的共封装和共递送。

Co-encapsulation and co-delivery of two or more functional molecules from a single formulation is an emerging academic and industrial research field for a wide range of applications. More specifically, in the pharmaceutical industry there has been extensive research in this area, in order to develop fixed-dose combination (FDC) drugs to treat conditions where multiple active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are required. Liquid formulations offer dosage flexibility, while addressing dosage form needs of specific patient populations (e.g. paediatrics). In addition, emulsions are attractive microstructures for the encapsulation/controlled delivery of functional molecules due to their multiphase attributes, ease of formation, as well as their utilisation in a number of structured liquid/semi-liquid products currently on the market. In this project, processing and formulation routes for the fabrication of novel sub-micrometre particles from pharmaceutically-relevant materials will be explored. The fabricated particles will be used to encapsulate an API of paediatric relevance, and different strategies will be developed to trigger and optimise the API release, while devising approaches to promote their Pickering functionality. Simple o/w emulsions will be employed to optimise the encapsulation and release of a secondary active ingredient. Once a better understanding of the mechanisms underpinning the encapsulation and release of a sole API from either particles or liquid droplets is achieved, the two will be combined to investigate the co-encapsulation and co-delivery of two APIs.