Blueberry Therapeutics are pleased to share the publication of a review article in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology titled ‘Antimicrobial polymeric materials and nanocomposites’.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fbioe.2021.780328/full

This peer-reviewed article was authored by Winnie Ntow-Boahene, a student in Professor Liam Good’s team at the Royal Veterinary College, London. The research is partly funded by Blueberry and supported by our Chief Scientific Officer, Dave Cook, who is also an author. The project also benefits from UK government funding from BBSRC (https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-1906777).

This review provides an excellent overview of the current state of play of antifungal treatments, and highlights that although not often serious at the individual level, fungal infections are on the increase and are a concern at a global level. These infections include onychomycosis (fungal nail infection) and tinea pedis (athlete’s foot), two core areas of focus for Blueberry.

Like many therapeutic approaches of the last century, antifungal treatments are generally small molecule drugs (organic compounds with low molecular weight). These often have limitations, such as low solubility and difficultly achieving the required concentrations at the site of infection in the body (‘bioavailability’). Antifungal resistance is increasing and becoming a problem akin to the more well-known issue of antibiotic resistance.

The authors suggest that alternative strategies are needed to treat fungal infections, such as the use of antifungal polymers, which can be natural or synthetic and are large molecules built up of multiple units. The antifungal activity comes from charged regions that allow adhesion to the fungus wall, hydrophobic (repels water) regions that allow entry into cell membranes, and hydrophilic (mixes with water) […]

Blueberry were recently invited to write two commentaries on the challenges of treating skin and nail diseases and the potential for nanotechnology approaches in dermal drug delivery. Here we share a brief overview of these articles.

We will all have encountered someone who is dealing with or has previously experienced a common ailment of the skin or nails, such as eczema (atopic dermatitis), acne, athlete’s foot (tinea pedis), or a fungal nail infection (onychomycosis). For people suffering with these everyday conditions, managing them can have a significant impact on their life, both in terms of their physical and their mental well-being.

Topical drugs are a non-invasive, painless, and convenient route of administration, and a logical choice for treating skin and nail disorders. They directly target the site of disease while limiting any unwanted systemic exposure and toxicities often associated with other delivery routes, such as injection or oral drugs. However, the skin is an excellent natural barrier that poses a significant challenge to topical drug delivery, due to its multi-layered composition. The capacity for a drug to enter and pass into our bodies relies upon its ability to penetrate both the hydrophobic (repels water) and hydrophilic (attracts water) layers of the skin, which many existing drug formulations are not designed to do. Similarly, for a topical treatment to reach the nail bed (the site of fungal nail infections) it needs to get through the nail. This is a hardened and effective barrier with hydrophilic properties that impede the permeation of existing antifungal drugs that are often hydrophobic. So, could new developments in […]