The gastrointestinal tract has always been of interest for drug delivery owing to the convenience of oral application because for the success of a drug therapy the compliance of the patients is very important. For patients the intake of medicaments is the most comfortable way and normally orally applied drugs are absorbed by the mucosa of the small intestine. Therefore the oral application is one of the main fields in research and development. However, the successful development of oral drugs has been challenged by a variety of barriers in the gastrointestinal tract. The epithelium of the intestinal mucosa which separates the external environment from the internal milieu of the body, lines the surface of the GI tract and is one of the barriers that limited the bioavailability of orally applied drugs. It is both a physical as well as a biochemical barrier. Cell membranes and the intercellular junctions between the cells (e.g. tight junctions) build the physical barrier. Metabolic enzymes (e.g. cytochrome P450) and polarized efflux systems (e.g. P-glycoprotein) act as the biochemical barrier.

The primary object is to develop delivery systems that can facilitate the permeation of potential drugs through the intestinal mucosa and to design drugs with structural characteristics to improve their absorption properties.

Our current projects focussing on drug absorption via the gastrointestinal barrier:

Set-up and cultivation video