Abstract
We are pleased to present this special issue of the Journal of Laboratory Automation that looks at novel drug development and delivery. How therapeutics are designed, developed, and delivered to patients is constantly evolving. With recent advances in molecular medicine and nanotechnology, this is an exceptionally exciting time in drug development. It is clear now that diseases such as cancer can benefit from more detailed diagnostic analysis of individual patient samples. This often involves a better understanding of genetic alterations and subsequent changes to other biological processes that are unique to the individual patient. In addition, with the identification of potential rare cancer stem cell populations that may escape traditional treatment, better methods for isolating, detecting, and analyzing these rare populations from cancer patients will prove integral to how medical professionals treat patients. This personal diagnostics approach has to be married with improved therapeutics that are specific to individual patients. Advances in microfluidics and nanotechnology provide the best chances at making this diagnostic/therapeutic paradigm shift a reality.
In addition to improved and more detailed personal diagnostics of diseases, these fields of technology are leading to greater improvements in drug development and delivery. This includes the use of novel molecules, such as DNA/RNA, as therapeutics and the use of nanoparticles, such as lipids and carbon nanostructures, as drug-delivery platforms. As with any emerging field of medical technology, a greater understanding of the mechanisms of action and other properties of these novel drug-delivery modalities is necessary for clinical acceptance. Better techniques for analyzing drugs and drug development platforms will lead to highly optimized therapeutics and faster pathways to clinical approval.
For this special issue, we have collected a set of original and review articles that we think highlight and exemplify many of these concepts as they relate to emerging technologies and approaches to drug development and drug delivery. The importance of cancer stem cells in cancer development and recurrence is becoming clearer and will need to be considered when developing novel diagnostic and therapeutic approaches to cancer. Methods that improve diagnostics through automated approaches to analyzing system biology programs such as the secretome to a variety of ways to isolate and analyze single cells are discussed here, including shear horizontal surface-acoustic-wave sensors and inductive-coupled plasma techniques.1–3 Novel approaches to drug development improve as our understanding and ability to modify genetic and protein molecules increases. This leads to work in the use and optimization of microRNAs and aptamers as new therapeutic approaches, both of which are highlighted here.4,5 In particular, we feature as our cover article an original report on reversible regulated aptamer activity that may prove useful against many diseases.
In addition, we have a number of review and original articles that cover some novel techniques for characterizing drug-delivery platforms. These include mathematical modeling of vesicle drug-delivery systems and fused deposition modeling for magnetic resonance imaging of solid dosage forms.6–8 This is important because as different modes of drug-delivery gain popularity as potential approaches to targeted and combinatorial drug delivery, better understanding of how drugs are loaded as well as how drug-delivery platforms deliver their payloads to cells and navigate the body will be key to optimization as well as to addressing any safety issues that may arise during the clinical approval process.