Using nanoparticles to treat polycystic kidney disease

<p>"Excited by the promise our research holds for PKD patients, we have been packaging a variety of PKD drugs into our nanoparticles, testing their ability to act as a courier service for renal drug delivery. We’ve been testing this process on drugs that show therapeutic benefits in animal models but are shadowed by off-target side effects. Because our nanoparticles can carry more than one drug — and even gene therapy — we can help develop and deploy a therapeutic combination that may soon offer patients more benefit than any single drug.</p> <p>Because the biology of ADPKD is not entirely understood, drug discovery has been slow. As we are seeing with the dramatic success of the COVID-19 vaccines, however, nanomedicine can catalyze research efforts. Nanoparticles offer a promising new way to deliver medicine, making it simultaneously less toxic and more effective."</p> <p><a href="https://chunglaboratory.com/principal-investigator/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Eun Ji Chung</a> is a biomedical engineer.</p> <p>She shares her story and discusses her KevinMD article, "<a href="https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2021/05/using-nano-couriers-to-deliver-pkd-drugs-to-just-the-right-address.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Using nano 'couriers' to deliver PKD drugs to just the right address</a>." (<a href= "https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2021/05/using-nano-couriers-to-deliver-pkd-drugs-to-just-the-right-address.html">https://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2021/05/using-nano-couriers-to-deliver-pkd-drugs-to-just-the-right-address.html</a>)</p>