Drug Delivery
Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences at University of Copenhagen
This is a specialised course. This means that 80% of the seats are reserved to PhD students enrolled at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences at UCPH and 20% of the seats are reserved to PhD students from other Danish Universities/faculties (except CBS).
The course is free of charge for PhD students at Danish universities (except Copenhagen Business School), and for PhD Students from NorDoc member faculties. All other participants must pay the course fee.
Anyone can apply for the course, but if you are not a PhD student at a Danish university, you will be placed on the waiting list until enrollment deadline. This also applies to PhD students from NorDoc member faculties. After the enrollment deadline, available seats will be allocated to applicants on the waiting list.
Learning objectives
A student who has met the objectives of the course will be able to:
1. The course objectives are i) to give participants an in-depth overview of important fundamental principles for drug delivery
2. and ii) to present methodologies for optimizing delivery of different drug classes ranging from small molecules to complex biopharmaceuticals (peptides, proteins, nucleic acids and vaccines)
Content
One of the main scientific challenges in pharmaceutical development is to deliver the drug compound in a controlled way at the site of action in a therapeutically optimal amount to obtain the desired pharmacological effect. Drug delivery is challenged by the existence of a variety of barriers related to either intrinsic drug characteristics and/or to the physiological environment in the body. It is essential to have a basic understanding of the extent to which these barriers affect the drug bioavailability, i.e. the relative rate and amount of the drug which reaches the target site.
An undesired low bioavailability may be a result of the presence of physiological or metabolic barriers, which a drug compound has to overcome before reaching the target site. Additional hurdles for drug delivery are e.g. an unfavorable biodistribution profile of the drug, physico-chemical drug properties, and a suboptimal pharmaceutical formulation.
Approaches to overcome barriers of drug delivery include the choice of administration route as well as formulation design. When optimizing drug delivery it is important to obtain a fundamental knowledge of the complex drug release characteristics in biological environments, biotransformation, as well as drug transport to the target site. A more rational design of drug compounds and pharmaceutical delivery systems is also enabled by a better understanding of the structural and dynamic functions of biological membrane barriers, e.g. the interplay between lipid bilayer structure, specific membrane transporters and drug molecules or excipients.
The course will cover the following key topics:
• Biological barriers and administration routes
• Metabolic barriers
• Physicochemical characteristics of drug substances
• Advanced drug delivery systems, targeting and stimuli-triggered release (e.g. lipid- and polymer-based delivery systems)
• Delivery of small molecule drugs (e.g. poorly soluble drugs and pro-drugs)
• Delivery of biopharmaceuticals (e.g. peptides, proteins, nucleic acids and vaccines)
• Membrane biophysics in drug delivery
• Imaging in drug delivery
• Industrial perspectives on drug delivery
• Safety and toxicity of nanocarrier systems
• The use of in vitro and in vivo models in drug delivery
Participants
The course is mainly offered to PhD students who have completed undergraduate courses in pharmaceutics, chemistry or biology.
Relevance to graduate programmes
The course is relevant to PhD students from the following graduate programmes at the Graduate School of Health and Medical Sciences, UCPH:
Pharmaceutical Sciences (Drug Research Academy)
All graduate programmes
Language
English
Form
Lectures, group work, writing of report, preparation
Course director
Camilla Foged, Professor, Department of Pharmacy, camilla.foged@sund.ku.dk
Teachers
Camilla Foged, Professor, UCPH-SUND
Federica Sebastiani, Assistant Professor, UCPH-SUND
Hanne Mørck Nielsen, Professor, UCPH-SUND
Ben Boyd, Professor, UCPH-SUND
Anette Müllertz, Professor, UCPH-SUND
Anas Aljabbari, Post doc, UCPH-SUND
Martin Malmsten, Professor, UCPH-SUND
Stephen Buckley, Head of ADME Department, Novo Nordisk A/S
Birger Brodin, Professor, UC-SUND
Marco van de Weert, Associate Professor, UC-SUND
Nina Østergaard Knudsen, Lundbeck
Rene Holm, Professor, SDU
Ken Howard, Aarhus University
Thomas Rades, Professor, UC-SUND
Dates
24-28 May 2027
Course location
TBA, PharmaSchool, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 2/Jagtvej 160, 2100 Copenhagen
Registration
Please register before 1 April 2027
Expected frequency
Once a year
Seats to PhD students from other Danish universities will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis and according to the applicable rules. Applications from other participants will be considered after the last day of enrolment.