Silvia Pescina
EX VIVO MODELS FOR OPHTHALMIC DELIVERY
Abstract
In recent years, the unmet clinical needs in ophthalmology have boosted the research in the field of ophthalmic delivery. Thus, the development of formulations allowing for minimally and less invasive approaches, amongst all the nanosystems, led to important results, even already implemented as marketed products.
Complete in-depth knowledge of all ophthalmic formulations is reached by integrating the in vitro methods with the ex vivo animal models. Particularly, the use of ex vivo models based on animal ocular tissues for permeation and retention studies is essential for the comprehension of formulation behaviour and consequently for their evaluation and optimization. Ex vivo ocular models can be either simple, like a single isolated membrane, such as cornea, sclera, choroid, or very complex, like a whole eye. Despite the level of complexity, the set-up and validation of such models represents a very important aspect of the research activity in the field of ophthalmic delivery, considering that reliability and reproducibility are the two principle mandatory requirements.
Therefore, the webinar will be focused on the development, validation, and application of ex vivo ocular models for drug delivery studies.
Mario Grassi
AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF DRUG DELIVERY AND MATHEMATICAL MODELING
Abstract
It is probably not well known that in 4000 BC Sumerians were able to prepare many medicaments and that the same was used to do Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians 3000 years BC. Interestingly, the idea that illness is a sort of divine punishment and healing is the consequent purification was born in that time and this view heavily affected the western world up to the modern age. If Hippocrates and Galenus started detaching from this viewpoint, the scientific darkness permeating Europe after the end of the Roman Empire reaffirmed this way of conceiving illness. Only in the 9th -13th centuries, thanks to the golden age of Arab Science, something changed this establishing the basis for Renaissance. Interestingly, in the first half of the 16th century, Paracelsus conceived the human body as a chemical laboratory. However, only at the end of the 19th century, thanks to Galilei’s approach, the real origins of many diseases were discovered. Since then, drug delivery has developed and the realization of the first controlled release system dates back to 1952 while the first example of mathematical modelling followed 9 years later. The clear affirmation of mathematical modelling in the biopharmaceutical field took place in the last twenty years of the 20th century. The third millennium opens with a new important challenge for mathematical modelling: combining in a single model drug release and in vivo drug adsorption, distribution and elimination.
