{"id":100,"date":"2018-01-17T23:36:10","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T22:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/people.unipi.it\/vittoria_raffa\/?page_id=100"},"modified":"2021-06-18T23:36:24","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T21:36:24","slug":"p3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/people.unipi.it\/vittoria_raffa\/p3\/","title":{"rendered":"OCULAR DRUG DELIVERY"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the higher rate of blindness due to population aging, minimally invasive and selective
\ndrug delivery to the eye still remains an open challenge, especially in the posterior segment. The
\nposterior eye segment is composed by several cell layers, each one specialized in different functions.
\nIt is affected by several diseases, which account for the majority of blindness worldwide.
\nOne of the most effective routes to reach the eye posterior segment is represented by intravitreal
\n(IVT) injections. However, current procedures have severe collateral effects due to the need of
\nrepetitive injections over the time, the unfavorable drug kinetics (the initial dose is very high and
\nquickly drops to zero due to physiological washing), the lack of specificity for the target (all cell
\nlayers are exposed to the drug), etc. In this\u00a0project we used a drug carrier, with the intent to
\nrelease the drug in a specific region or tissue and to prolong its half-life. Specifically, we validated
\na carrier based on magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs). We found that magnetic nanoparticle, after intraocular injection, are able to rapidly and persistently localize within the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) in an autonomously manner. Most importantly, our results show that surface functionalization could change the fate of the particles, driving their localization in different cell layers of the posterior eye chamber, such as the choroid or the retina. We used MNPs to deliver neurotrophic factors, which have a very short half-life in vivo, usually making ineffective their clinical use. We found that the injection of MNPs functionalized with nerve growth factor (NGF) or brain derived nerve factor (BDNF)\u00a0 prevents injuries to the posterior eye chamber and sustain the regeneration process compared to that obtained using the free factors. We postulate that the
\nincrease in stability and the localization of growth factors mediated by MNPs are responsible for
\nthe enhanced neuroprotective effects of NGF and BDNF in the MNP group compared with the
\nsham group. Our data suggest that MNP could represent a powerful strategy for the design of
\nnovel minimally invasive carriers for cell-specific ocular delivery and neuroprotection.<\/p>\n

MAIN COLLABORATIONS<\/p>\n

Prof L Dente, UNIPI<\/p>\n

PUBLICATIONS<\/p>\n