Using nanoparticles to treat polycystic kidney disease

"Excited by the promise our research holds for PKD patients, we have been packaging a variety of PKD drugs into our nanoparticles, testing their ability to act as a courier service for renal drug delivery. We've been testing this process on drugs that show therapeutic benefits in animal models but are shadowed by off-target side effects. Because our nanoparticles can carry more than one drug — and even gene therapy — we can help develop and deploy a therapeutic combination that may soon offer patients more benefit than any single drug.

Because the biology of ADPKD is not entirely understood, drug discovery has been slow. As we are seeing with the dramatic success of the COVID-19 vaccines, however, nanomedicine can catalyze research efforts. Nanoparticles offer a promising new way to deliver medicine, making it simultaneously less toxic and more effective."

Eun Ji Chung is a biomedical engineer.

She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, "Using nano 'couriers' to deliver PKD drugs to just the right address." (https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2021/05/using-nano-couriers-to-deliver-pkd-drugs-to-just-the-right-address.html)