Robotics

Molecular robots that work cooperatively in swarms

In a global first, scientists have demonstrated that molecular robots are able to accomplish cargo delivery by employing a strategy of swarming, achieving a transport efficiency five times greater than that of single robots.

Robotics

Life-like robots soon to be reality

Life-like robots that can make decisions, adapt to their environment and learn, are one step closer thanks to a University of Bristol team who has demonstrated a new way of embedding computation into soft robotic materials. ...

Robotics

Bioinspired micro-robot based on white blood cells

A team of scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems (MPI-IS) in Stuttgart invented a tiny micro-robot that resembles a white blood cell traveling through the circulatory system. It has the shape, the ...

Robotics

Micromotors push around single cells and particles

A new type of micromotor—powered by ultrasound and steered by magnets—can move around individual cells and microscopic particles in crowded environments without damaging them. The technology could open up new possibilities ...

page 1 from 2

Drug delivery

Drug delivery is the method or process of administering a pharmaceutical compound to achieve a therapeutic effect in humans or animals. Drug delivery technologies are patent protected formulation technologies that modify drug release profile, absorption, distribution and elimination for the benefit of improving product efficacy and safety, as well as patient convenience and compliance. Most common methods of delivery include the preferred non-invasive peroral (through the mouth), topical (skin), transmucosal (nasal, buccal/sublingual, vaginal, ocular and rectal) and inhalation routes. Many medications such as peptide and protein, antibody, vaccine and gene based drugs, in general may not be delivered using these routes because they might be susceptible to enzymatic degradation or can not be absorbed into the systemic circulation efficiently due to molecular size and charge issues to be therapeutically effective. For this reason many protein and peptide drugs have to be delivered by injection. For example, many immunizations are based on the delivery of protein drugs and are often done by injection.

Current efforts in the area of drug delivery include the development of targeted delivery in which the drug is only active in the target area of the body (for example, in cancerous tissues) and sustained release formulations in which the drug is released over a period of time in a controlled manner from a formulation. Types of sustained release formulations include liposomes, drug loaded biodegradable microspheres and drug polymer conjugates.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA