Dinesh O. Shah Annual Lecture in Surface Science – UNDERSTANDING AND OVERCOMING BIOLOGICAL BARRIERS FOR DRUG D

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Samir Mitragotri, Ph.D.
Hiller Professor of Bioengineering and Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

UNDERSTANDING AND OVERCOMING BIOLOGICAL BARRIERS FOR DRUG DELIVERY

Abstract:

Effective delivery of drugs is a major problem in today’s healthcare. At a fundamental level, the challenge of drug delivery reflects the fact that the drug distribution in the body is limited by the body’s natural metabolic processes and transport barriers. These biological barriers, while serving an important purpose of regulating the body’s metabolic functions, limit the drug dose that ultimately reaches the target site. Accordingly, many drugs fail to reach their full therapeutic potential. Our research aims at developing a fundamental understanding of the body’s key biological barriers such as skin, intestinal epithelium and the immune system, and utilizing this understanding to develop novel means to negotiate these barriers to deliver drugs. Our research has led to the understanding of how transport properties of biological barriers can be modulated to deliver drugs in effective ways for the treatment of diseases such as diabetes and cancer, among others. I will present an overview of the lessons learned from our exploration of these biological barriers.

Biography:

Samir Mitragotri is the Hiller Professor of Bioengineering and Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. His research has provided new insights into biological barriers of skin and gastrointestinal tract, among others. His research has also led to new methods of transdermal, oral, and targeted drug delivery. He is an author of over 300 publications and is a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher. Prof. Mitragotri is highly active in translating his inventions to clinical and commercial products. He is an inventor on over 180 patents and patent applications. His inventions have led to several products that have been commercialized or are in advanced clinical development. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Inventors. He is a foreign member of the Indian National Academy of Engineering. He is also an elected fellow of AAAS, CRS, BMES, AIMBE, and AAPS. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, India and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the Editor-in-Chief of AIChE’s and SBE’s journal Bioengineering and Translational Medicine.