Irach B Taraporewala
Sitara Pharmaceutical Group, USA
Title: Drug Delivery to the Posterior Segment of the Eye- The Challenges and the Solutions
Biography
Biography: Irach B Taraporewala
Abstract
With the aging population and the global increase in the incidence of diabetes, chronic diseases of the posterior segment of the eye are becoming increasingly prevalent. Treatment of disorders such as age-related macular degeneration (AMD), diabetic retinopathy, macular edema and uveitis require the effective and reliable delivery of a drug molecule into the choroid and retinal tissue layers in the eye’s posterior segment. Because of the numerous natural barriers to a drug molecule’s entry into the interior of the eye, this is often a challeging proposoition. A number of drug substance classes with vastly different physicochemical properties are being developed to treat such disorders, including small molecule, polypeptides, monoclonal antibodies and oligonucleotide aptamers. With these advances comes the need to develop new drug delivery technologies to achieve sustained therapeutic levels of drug in the target ocular tissues. The presentation will review the current state of drug delivery and recent advances in this area. Both approaches of novel drug formulation methodologies and medical device development are being utilized for the purpose. Use of formulation additives, nanoparticle, microparticle and liposomal approaches are being increasingly developed, as are new types of implantable and injected medical devices that provide for successful elution of therapeutic levels of drug substances into the choroid and retina. These advances are likely to impact the future of drug development for the effective management of ocular diseases of the posterior segment.