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Background
Grace is a senior in the Biomedical Engineering Department at UT Austin. She has been working with us for the past 3 years.
She is currently Vice President of Tutoring for SEEK (Student Engineers Educating Kids) and was previously a Program Officer (2011-2012) for the same.
She was also Chairwoman of the Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Advisory Board (2011-2012), and is currently also a member of the BME Student Giving Campaign.
Grace has won several awards for her research in the lab. In July 2012, Grace won the third prize in the (undergraduate) poster paper competition of the Society for Biomaterials (SFB) initiated Biomaterials' Day. She has also been awarded the Undergraduate Research Fellowship twice by the University of Texas at Austin. Currently, Grace is conducting
her research under the direction
of Dr. Mary Caldorera-Moore in the area of hydrogels for the oral delivery of hydrophobic therapeutics.
Research Summary
Oral administration of hydrophobic therapeutic agents have several obstacles that need to be circumvented before it can be used effectively. Compared to intravenous delivery, there is low bioavailability in transportation of the hydrophobic agents from the gastrointestinal tract to the bloodstream. Appropriate design of polymeric carriers can ensure the drug is carried from the GI tract to the bloodstream without it being inactivated.
We hypothesize that our acrylate-based co-polymers can be used as a targeted oral delivery system for the hydrophobic drug Diltiazem. We have used UV-initiated film polymerization techniques to synthesize microparticles that can be used to aid successful oral delivery by staying collapsed in the acid environment of the stomach and then swell and release the drug at the more neutral, slightly basic environment of the upper small intestine. In the primary stages of the experiment, the less expensive, fluorescent molecule Fluorescein was used in place of the drug Diltiazem to observe the particle loading and release characteristics. Fluorescein works well as an analogue to Diltiazem because it has a similar size and hydrophobicity. In vitro characterization of particles’ biocompatibility and ability to effectively transport agents across the intestinal lining will be investigated using a co-culture model. Cytotoxicity experiments will be performed to confirm our hypothesis that the co-polymers are not toxic to human cells. In the cytotoxicity studies, the cell growth rate of control cells will be compared to the cell growth rate of cells grown in the presence of polymer particles.
After characterizing our co-polymer system, we plan on optimizing the polymer and determining the ideal formulation for our end goal of oral drug delivery.
Publications
Schoener C A; Hutson H N; Fletcher G K; Peppas N A, "Amphiphilic Interpenetrating Networks for the Delivery of Hydrophobic, Low Molecular Weight Therapeutic Agents", Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., 50 12556–12561 (2011) (link).
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