Drug Delivery

Artursson group

Our research is like an exciting journey through the human body, where we explore how administered drugs are absorbed and travel through our body to reach where they are needed. We study both traditional small drug molecules and biological drugs such as peptides and oligonucleotides. By understanding how drugs are absorbed, distributed between different parts of the body, metabolized, and excreted at the molecular and cellular level, we create the conditions for the development of more effective drugs and drug formulations. Our research is the most cited at our faculty and has resulted in many international awards.

We combine various disciplines such as bioinformatics, cell and molecular biology, -omics (a term that covers different types of 'omics', such as genomics, proteomics, metabolomics), with computational chemistry, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacy. Instead of using experimental animals, we develop cell models from human tissues such as the intestine, liver, and kidney. We culture the cells both as cell monolayers (2D format) and as organoids (3D format) and use them, among other things, to study how important so-called transport proteins and drug-metabolizing proteins affect the metabolism of drugs in our bodies. We use stem cells as human cells in our research. Important methods in our toolbox, in addition to our cell models, include mass spectrometry-based proteomics where we can analyze the presence of thousands of proteins, how the proteins change in our cells, and which proteins a particular drug binds to. We then use the results to optimize physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) models so that we can predict the behavior of drugs in our bodies over time. Recently, our techniques have also begun to be used in chemical testing, such as endocrine-disrupting substances, pesticides, and toxins.

Our models are used by the pharmaceutical industry and academic researchers worldwide and also contribute daily to the research within the Drug Discovery platform at SciLifeLab in the form of the Department of Pharmacy's infrastructure unit UDOPP. There, we analyze the properties of various drug candidates and predict how they will behave in the body before they are even tested in the laboratory or in clinical studies. This allows us to optimize the properties of drug candidates and develop better drugs. In summary, our research aims to increase our understanding of how drugs work in the body and to open doors to new and more effective ways to deliver them to the places where they are needed most. It is an exciting journey, and we look forward to seeing where it takes us next.

Contact

  • Visiting Address: BMC, Husargatan 3, A1:2, A2:2, A3:3, B3:3, B3:4, C2:2
  • Letter and Postal Address: Box 580, SE-751 23 Uppsala

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