The treatment of disease is complex, and often involves addressing more than one aspect of the condition at once, leading to the need for multiple drug types.   Furthermore, there are often examples drug combinations for which a specific combination of drugs is thought to be synergistic, in some cases enabling the treatment of drug-resistant strains of cancer or helping to reproduce key aspects of wound-healing.    Recently, much has been learned about the role of timed release, and the introduction of different agents at different times to achieve truly impactful results with specific drug treatments.  These advances in biological understanding, however,  are difficult and in many cases less than obvious to translate to drug delivery platforms in which agents can be programmed for release with unique rates, profiles, and time-staggered delivery.      The layer-by-layer approach can be used to generate finely tuned ultrathin systems that can release small molecule, proteins, nucleic acids and other biologic drugs over sustained time periods, and with significant control of release characteristics.  Using as few as 3 or 4 bilayers to tens of layers, we can generate thin films with demonstrated therapeutic efficacy over a broad range of efficacy.  Furthermore, we have engineered approaches that can yield staged release of therapeutics from large, macroscopic surfaces such as biomedical devices and implants to nanoparticle surfaces designed to target tumors.    This approach is particularly attractive for the delivery of proteins and nucleic acids such as siRNA and DNA.   By demonstrating efficacy in animal models, the promise of these material systems and their potential in biomedical applications will be highlighted.   Finally, recent work with the DeSimone lab has led to demonstrations of the potential to translate this highly adaptable technique to mass-scale processing methods and rapid assay capabilities.    Means of adapting these methods toward new, potentially disruptive applications and the potential of these methods for commercial development will also be discussed.

Staged multidrug release from tunable nanolayer surfaces

248th National Meeting (2014)

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