How new medicines will find their way from the research laboratory into your body
en-GBde-DEes-ESfr-FR

How new medicines will find their way from the research laboratory into your body

27/02/2025 SINTEF

Nanomedicines save lives, but they don’t reach the market or the patient’s body fast enough. Researchers have now come up with a recipe to accelerate and improve the process.

Nanomedicines: They are helping colleagues with everything they need to remember. Researchers from all over the world have collaborated to create the useful list.
“It’s not a recipe book; it’s a guide,” said Ruth Schmid, who works at the Norwegian science institute SINTEF.

From idea to lifesaver?

The researcher had actually retired. But science needed the help of Schmid. She has spent most of her professional career researching nanoparticles and the properties they can be given. She has also been president of the global research organisation, CRS.

The problem: Nanomedicines can save many lives, but it takes too long to get new medicines into use in practice. Too few good ideas actually reach the patient.

Nanomedicines are medicines that use tiny particles to transport the active substance. The first nanomedicine was approved back in 1995. It is used to treat several types of cancer. Chemotherapy is encapsulated in fat particles. When the fat particles reach the cancerous tumor, they release the medicine locally, i.e. where it is needed.

Only work where they are needed

The main advantage of nanomedicines is that they work precisely where they are needed. If a patient receives cancer medicine by injection into a vein, the medicine will spread throughout the body.

“When a patient is given an ordinary cancer medicine, just 0.01 percent of it will actually reach the tumour itself. The rest goes to the liver, the kidneys and healthy tissue throughout the body. It can cause side effects in these parts of the body, because such medicines are usually toxic to many types of cells,” explained Ruth Schmid.

“With nanomedicine, you have the ability to control where it goes in the body,” she said.

Another problem that nanomedicines can solve is administering two medicines in the correct ratio.

“A new product that came to market a few years ago encapsulates two chemotherapy drugs that act synergistically,” said Schmid.

Synergistic means that the two substances amplify each other. They work best together, but only in a very specific ratio.

In this case, the ratio must be five to one. If you inject them into the bloodstream in the correct ratio, you cannot be certain how they will then spread, but they will certainly not reach the tumour at exactly the same time in a ratio of five to one. With nanotechnology, they can be encapsulated in exactly the right ratio between the two substances, and then transported together to the cancer cells and released there.

Faster approval

There are many examples. Nanomedicines have already saved lives and will continue to save many more in the future.

The problem is that all new medicines must be approved.

“You need the analyses in order to determine: Do they have the desired effect? Does the medicine have any side effects? Is it safe to use?” noted Schmid.

It is the task of getting such medicines approved more rapidly for which she and her colleagues have issued guidelines. The guidelines go by the name of “DELIVER”. They cover the delivery of a medicine from research laboratory to healthcare system. The seven chapters of the checklist start with the seven letters of “DELIVER”.

This is DELIVER:

The seven letters of “DELIVER” are used as a checklist for the seven points that drug researchers need to consider:

  • D is for ‘defined product profile’. It is not enough just to develop a particle; the particle must also fulfil the need for which it is being developed.
  • E is for ‘essential characterisation’. Description of chemical composition, physical and chemical properties and behaviour of the fluids that are relevant to the application.
  • L is for the ‘lead candidate’ that is developed to its optimal state. Initially, perhaps thousands of possibilities may be tested. One possibility must then be selected for further development and optimisation.
  • I is for ‘intellectual property’. In other words, a patent and the freedom to develop without coming into conflict with the patents of others.
  • V is for ‘validated efficacy and safety’. The medicine must produce the appropriate effect every time it is tested, all the way from the laboratory via testing on animals to testing on humans.
  • E is for ‘economical and scalable production’. It must be possible to carry out the process at the correct scale, e.g. on an industrial scale in a factory.
  • R is for ‘regulatory and clinical pathway’. In order to apply for permission to carry out clinical trials to run, all the considerations relating to the regulations must first be in order.
Essential to think right from the start

“We’re trying to guide you through what you need to think about right from the start. It will help you make sure you don’t develop anything that will never reach the market, for example because it’s too expensive, because it can’t be produced in a controlled manner, or because you can’t protect the rights to the product,” explained the researcher.

Other possible obstacles are that the product cannot be produced in sufficiently large or small quantities. It must be possible to produce standard medicines on a large scale in a factory and for them to be absolutely identical every time. Recently, it has also become more and more relevant to produce personal medicines: Medicines that are specifically adapted to the person who needs them. Such medicines may not be produced in doses of more than a few millilitres. Production of this type must also be controlled.

“We have created a table of points to consider for each topic in order to get the product to market. This is something that academics in particular don’t think about very much from the start,” said Ruth Schmid.

Reference: A translational framework to DELIVER nanomedicines to the clinic i nature nanotechnology.

27/02/2025 SINTEF
Regions: Europe, Norway
Keywords: Health, Medical

Disclaimer: AlphaGalileo is not responsible for the accuracy of content posted to AlphaGalileo by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the AlphaGalileo system.

Témoignages

We have used AlphaGalileo since its foundation but frankly we need it more than ever now to ensure our research news is heard across Europe, Asia and North America. As one of the UK’s leading research universities we want to continue to work with other outstanding researchers in Europe. AlphaGalileo helps us to continue to bring our research story to them and the rest of the world.
Peter Dunn, Director of Press and Media Relations at the University of Warwick
AlphaGalileo has helped us more than double our reach at SciDev.Net. The service has enabled our journalists around the world to reach the mainstream media with articles about the impact of science on people in low- and middle-income countries, leading to big increases in the number of SciDev.Net articles that have been republished.
Ben Deighton, SciDevNet
AlphaGalileo is a great source of global research news. I use it regularly.
Robert Lee Hotz, LA Times

Nous travaillons en étroite collaboration avec...


  • BBC
  • The Times
  • National Geographic
  • The University of Edinburgh
  • University of Cambridge
  • iesResearch
Copyright 2025 by DNN Corp Terms Of Use Privacy Statement