SweDeliver Dissertation • Julia Parlow

Uppsala University's research environment in Parenteral drug delivery has – within the framework of international competence center SweDeliver – consolidated its position at the forefront of their field. In a doctoral project Julia Parlow has worked on creating an in vitro model for predicting the absorption rate of biological drugs after subcutaneous administration.

Biological drugs are a large and important group of therapies that include insulin, GLP-1 therapies, and certain targeted cancer therapies. They often cannot be taken orally as they tend to break down in the stomach, making injections an attractive method of administration that patients can perform themselves using injection pens.

The development of new drugs requires knowledge of how they are absorbed into the body after injection, but research has so far lacked effective methods to predict this. In her thesis, Julia Parlow introduces a tool for analyzing how therapeutic molecules behave in a synthetic model of the human subcutaneous environment – thereby paving the way for more reliable predictions of how potential drugs are absorbed after subcutaneous administration.

Parlow's method combines an extracellular matrix based on a collagen–hyaluronic acid gel with microscopy and FRAP to map how molecules spread and move in a biorelevant environment. The model, which is already being applied at Uppsala University, reduces the need for animal experiments and offers a more precise alternative to previously available methods.

Friday 13 February Julia Parlow defends her thesis at Uppsala University's Biomedical Center, Lecture Hall B41.

Supervisor is Per Hansson and Magnus Bergström (Uppsala University, Department of Medicinal Chemistry) and Helen Sjögren (Ferring Pharmaceuticals A/S). Opponent is Alain Pluen, Senior Lecturer at University of Manchester (UK).

Researcher Bio

Julia Parlow graduated from the Master Programme in Pharmacy at Uppsala University in 2017. After that she worked at a pharmacy before being recruited as a PhD student at SweDeliver and Professor Per Hansson's research group in Pharmaceutical Physical Chemistry at Uppsala University.