Our philosophy

According to The Cosmological Anthropic Principle the laws of Nature and the structure of the Universe are 'designed' with the goal of generating and sustaining 'observers'. In that respect observers are necessary to bring the Universe into being. The appearance of observers at some stage of the Universe evolution is irrevocably fixed by the cosmological laws. The concept of the Self-Cognizant Universe places human beings aimed to explore the Universe in the center of its evolution.

Since the biological evolution of human being is almost finished, the humanity should find a way to continue evolution without setting hopes on Darwin selection. A Russian scientist K. Tsiolkovsky has noted in the last century that the humanity should learn being independent of the Earth resources and finally to be able sustaining the life-cycle only using radiation; this is possibly the only reliable source of energy in the extraterrestrial environment. Another Russian scientist N. Fedorov suggested that the out of Darwin way of evolution would proceed by eliminating most of the diseases and the increase the life expectancy to infinity, making human beings immortals, which is in principle does not contradict to laws of Nature. At present, both long-term projections lie in the scope of biotechnology research, namely the conception and design of artificial tools that can act in the human organism more efficiently than the regulating mechanisms created by the Nature during billions of years. From this perspective the best problem for investigation could be the conception and design of drug carriers

This web resource

The structure of the Self-Cognizant Universe implies unification of observers into the network with efficient communications. Thus, the main objective of this web resource is to collect all available information on the subject of Drug Delivery and Controlled release in one place. You can find here information about conferences, workshops, important events, job opportunities, as well as RSS of recent articles published in the field of Drug delivery.

We aim at unifying research groups working in different countries on this web resource. The interface is interactive, everybody interested in Drug Delivery can Register and upload the information about his research, advertise job openings and incoming conferences. Please help building this resource with sharing the information available in your group and possibly find a future collaborator.

Drug targeting: the delivery of a particular active component to a specific place without affecting other sites in the human body. Targeting may result in serious decrease of the administrated doses, thus decrease of the overall toxicity of the product as well as the decrease of the side effects. Targets could be either specific receptors on cell membranes or local zones of extreme physiological conditions: temperature, pH, etc. In fact, external physiological conditions can induce the conformational changes in the polymer material which can lead to the release of the drug. Polymeric materials used as drug carriers usually have high molecular masses. This gives an additional opportunity to use them for targeting: blood vessels in inflamed or tumor tissues have enhanced permeability for large particles. Polymeric micelles, single chains or parts of gels can penetrate and accumulate in the inflamed or tumor tissues.

Stealth technologies aiming at hiding the product from the immune system, thus avoiding an immune reaction. Vesicles, block copolymer micelles or nanoparticles covered with PEO chains have lower immune response due to steric repulsion of PEO chains in the outer layer with proteins.

Controlled release: the release of the drug can be modulated with time: it can decrease with time, can be stable during long periods or can be cyclic. The ability to predefine the temporal rate of the release of the drug allows eliminating under- and overdosing: common shortcomings of the traditional administration. The use of degradable polymer materials provides more control of the release rates: the degradation of polymer matrix may last for weeks providing stable release of the component. All these purposes of controlled drug delivery can be achieved with the use of tailor-made polymeric and, in general, soft-matter structures such as block copolymer micelles, polymer gels, polysoaps, vesicles, etc. The formulation and synthesis of these objects are well developed, however the theory of drug carriers or prodrugs is almost inexistent. We are aimed to close this gap.

• Vladimir Baulin

• Molecular Simulation group, Tarragona Spain
• BioScience Engineering Group, Cambridge, UK
• Vivamer LTD, UK
• Institut de Biomolécules, Montpellier, France
• Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques, Paris II, France