Competitive Advantages:
Sustained release, Increase patience compliance, Lower ocular pressure. The present invention provides a sustained drug delivery system for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), comprising corticosteroid encapsulated nanoparticles incorporated into a thermoreversible hydrogel. The corticosteroid may be triamcinolone acetate (TA), dexamethasone, or loteprednol etabonate (LE). The proposed drug delivery system is nontoxic to ARPE-19 (retinal pigment epithelium) cells and significantly reduces VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) expression as compared to solutions of the coticosteroids. The present invention provides sustained delivery of the corticosteroid to the posterior segment of the eye, reducing the frequency of intraocular injections necessary to maintain therapeutic concentrations.Our researchers have developed a novel drug delivery system of loteprednol etabonate-encapsulated PEGylated PLGA nanoparticles incorporated into the PLGA-PEG-PLGA thermoreversible gel for treatment of AMD. This novel drug delivery system has proven to be nontoxic to ARPE-19 cells and significantly reduced VEGF expres-sion as compared to loteprednol etabonate solution. These results suggest that this new drug delivery system can be used for further work to reduce intravitreal administration frequency thus improv-ing the treatment of ocular dysfunction.
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