Development of new azo-hydrogels and a numerical multi-field model for colon-specific drug release

• Applicants: Professor Dr.-Ing. Markus Böl; Professorin Dr. Julia Großeheilmann
• Subject Area: Mechanics ; Technical Chemistry
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 523822408

The use of drugs makes a decisive contribution to improving the quality of life, and the turnover of the pharmaceutical industry is correspondingly large. Biotechnological active ingredients, such as peptides and proteins, are often larger than traditional active ingredients and have limited stability. When administered orally, they are degraded by proteases or decomposed by the acidic environment of the stomach. Therefore, therapeutic proteins are administered via injections, rather than the natural, less invasive and less expensive oral route. To ensure that successful therapy with less stable molecules is easily accessible in the future, the delivery methods must also develop along with increasing amount of biotechnological and bioactive molecules. Hydrogels, which encapsulate active ingredients or other bioactive materials in their three-dimensional network structure and thus protect them, offer a promising alternative to established and literature-known variants of drug delivery. At the target site, they are subsequently released uniformly or, in the case of self-regulating drug delivery systems (DDS), within a short time in response to external stimuli such as pH. The pH-sensitive release from hydrogels in media that simulate the gastrointestinal tract has been explored for oral delivery and show, among other drawbacks, too low mechanical stability and too slow response to external stimuli for use in medication. To overcome the disadvantages of hydrogels in medical applications, the present project aims to investigate hydrogels based on polymerized ionic liquids (PILs). Precise colon-specific drug delivery requires that the trigger mechanism in the delivery system responds only to physiological conditions specific to the colon. To achieve this, this project proposes novel azo-hydrogels as dosage forms that enable oral colon-specific delivery. In order to predict the release and swelling profile at an early stage, a three-dimensional multi-field model will be developed to predict the mechanical behavior as well as to describe the mechanisms of drug release. The project thus combines two central research aims of equal importance: 1) The synthesis and characterization of a series of novel azo-hydrogels for targeted drug release into the colon, 2) The development of a continuum mechanics-based multi-field model to represent drug release from hydrogels in response to pH and enzyme changes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Dr.-Ing. Robert Seydewitz