Organized by:

Doctoral Programme in Research and Evaluation of Drugs. Application of Pharmaceutical Technologies to the Development of Advances Therapies. PharmaNanoGene research group.

Funded by Erasmus + program.

Summary:

Owing to their biocompatibility and versatility, lipid nanoparticles show many advantages over polymeric nanoparticles, and have been widely used for drug and active delivery. Many different types of lipid nanoparticles have been engineered, the most important being solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN), nanostrucured lipid carriers (NLC), lipid-drug conjugates (LDC) and lipid nanocapsules (LNC). High pressure homogenisation (HPH), a simple and scalable technique for the production of o/w parenteral emulsions, has recently been applied for lipid nanoparticles production and represents the main method established for these nanoparticles. Alternative preparation methods have been deeply investigated in order to overcome patented methods and disadvantages of HPH.

Well established analytical methods are currently employed for physico-chemical characterisation of lipid nanoparticles, from a morphological and thermodynamical point of view.

Drug can be encapsulated in lipid nanoparticles in different ways, according to the preparation method employed and to chemico-physical nature of the compounds: drug loading (the ratio between drug and lipid) and drug encapsulation efficiency (the ratio between the drug recovered in nanoparticles and the amount weighted for the preparation of the same) have to be considered.

Lipid nanoparticles are composed of physiological or physiologically related lipids. Therefore, pathways for their transport and metabolism are present in the body, which may contribute to a large extent to the in vivo fate of the carrier. Different administration routes can be employed: oral, parenteral, dermal, ocular, pulmonary, allowing to overcome biological barriers (blood-brain barrier, blood-ocular barrier). Lipid nanoparticles have been proposed for different therapeutic aims: among the most intriguing and recent tasks, delivery of cytotoxic drugs for anticancer therapy, and delivery of macromolecules (proteins and nucleic acids) with stability and bioavailability problems.

Teacher:

Luigi Sebastiano Battaglia

Academic positions:

• Research Associate at Dipartimento di Scienza e Tecnologia del Farmaco, Università degli Studi di Torino, since December 27th, 2006.
• Assistant Professor in Pharmaceutical Technology at Dipartimento di Scienza e Tecnologia del Farmaco, Università degli Studi di Torino, since October 1st, 2012

Scientific activity:

His scientific activity has been addressed mainly on solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN), aiming to:

• develop new techniques for the preparation of SLN
• deliver peptides and proteins in SLN
• deliver anticancer and cytotoxic drugs in SLN.

In particular he developed and patented a new technology for SLN preparation, named fatty acid coacervation.  The main advantages of this technology are: the low cost, it is a solvent-free process, and the mild operating temperatures.

Scientific societies membership:

Already member of ADRITELF (Associazione Docenti e Ricercatori Italiani di Tecnologia e Legislazione Farmaceutica) and currently member of CRS (Controlled Release Society) Italian Chapter, from 2013 he is member of the Coordination Committee of NanoPharmaNet, the Italian Network of Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine. Currently he is also member of EASD (European Association for the Study of Diabetes). He is Speciality Editorial Board member of Webmedcentral Plus from 2012 and Editorial Board Member of International Journal of Nanomaterials, Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine from 2015.

Calendar:

Number of places:

50

Contact and enrolment:

Marían Solinís marian.solinis@ehu.eus