Delivering Bioactive Components for Medical Treatments
SLU ID 14-013 | Fabricating Hydrolytically Degradable Polyethylene Glycol Microsphere Delivery Vehicles
Intellectual Property Status
Seeking
Patented
Know-how based
Licensee
Development partner
Commercial partner
Background
Hydrogel microspheres of less than 200 μm are powerful tools that have a multitude of applications in the areas of drug delivery, tissue engineering, and biosensors. Hydrogels are a preferred choice because of their tissue-like properties; high water content; ease of fabrication; and tunable chemical, mechanical and biological characteristics. Numerous methods have been proposed to generate hydrogel microspheres. However, these methods are often harmful for biological applications such as cell or protein encapsulation. Moreover, most of the dispersion-based methods involve the use of either organic solvent or surfactants. Although methods such as microfluidic devices offer a lot of control over process parameters and fabrication characteristics, the devices are very complex in design and thus have limited applications.
Overview
Researchers at Saint Louis University have developed a method to fabricate hydrogel microspheres composed of multiarm polyethylene glycol acrylates (PEG-Ac) or vinyl sulfones (PEG-VS) and dithiol crosslinkers. The microspheres are biocompatible and suitable for encapsulation and delivery of bioactive components like proteins, cells, or drugs.
Benefits
The potential benefits of this technology include:
Increasing the ability to tune degradation rates
Increasing the ability to specify mesh size
Increasing the ability to tune protein release kinetics
Increasing the ability to control microsphere size
Increasing encapsulation efficiency
Increasing the amount of time that biological activity maintained
Minimizing damage to bioactive component deliverables
Minimizing invasiveness of treatments for knee osteoarthritis
Minimizing the invasiveness of enzyme replacement therapies
Minimizing the invasiveness of dermal repair procedures
Applications
The potential applications of this technology include:
Delivering proteins
Delivering cells
Delivering enzymes
Delivering drugs
Opportunity
Saint Louis University is seeking a partner to further develop and commercialize this technology.