Current treatments for osteoarthritis suffer from a lack of effective drugs and inability to keep the treatment at the site of action. By bringing together Pfizer’s novel therapeutic active agents and Bend Research’s drug delivery technologies the collaborators hope to tackle both problems.
“[Our system] forms a loose net gel which maintains the nanoparticles within [the knee] cavity for an extended period of time”, Michael Morgan, director of new technologies at Bend Research, told in-PharmaTechnologist.
Bend has tested the nanoparticle drug delivery system in-vitro and done initial studies in the knee joints of rodents. The next steps are to extend these studies to longer durations and do more work on controlling the release of the molecules.