Journal of Nanomedicine & Nanotechnology

Nanocarrier-based Mitochondria-targeted Drug Delivery Systems

10^th International Conference on Nanomedicine and Nanotechnology in Health Care

July 25-27, 2016 Bangkok, Thailand

Volkmar Weissig

Midwestern University College of Pharmacy Glendale, USA

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Nanomed Nanotechnol

Abstract:

Sub-cellular drug delivery is emerging as the new frontier in drug delivery. It has become more and more evident that the efficiency and efficacy of drug action depends largely on how well an unaided drug molecule is able to reach its intracellular target or even its target inside organelles such as mitochondria. Subsequently, the specific delivery of a drug to its site of action inside cells will dramatically improve its action. A random observation at the laboratory bench has helped pave the way towards the development of organelle-targeted pharmaceutical nanocarriers. A fortuitous discovery in the mid-1990s involving the self-assembly of a molecule, known to accumulate inside mitochondria, has led to the development of subcellular nanocarriers suited for the selective delivery of biological active molecules to mitochondria inside living mammalian cells. Mitochondria play a key role in apoptosis and several clinically used as well as experimental drugs are known to trigger apoptosis by directly interacting with target site at or inside mitochondria. Therefore we hypothesized that that the mitochondria-targeted delivery of such drugs will dramatically increase their pro-apoptotic activity. We have been developing during the last years a variety of mitochondria-specific pharmaceutical nanocarriers for the purpose of delivering therapeutic DNA or low-molecular weight compounds to mitochondria inside living mammalian cells. Here we will summarize our efforts and introduce new data demonstrating the applicability of our mitochondria-targeted nanocarriers for the delivery of biologically active molecules to mitochondria in living mammalian cells in vitro and in vivo.

Biography :

Email: vweiss@midwestern.edu