Bjarne Van Der Herten

Pharmaceutical Engineering Research Group

Ottergemsesteenweg 460

B-9000 Gent(Belgium)

Education: Master of Science in Industrial Pharmacy

Mechanistic investigation of delivery and uptake of large molecule drugs.

Biologic drugs are becoming increasingly important in healthcare system due their ability to target previously unmanageable diseases when using small molecule drugs. However, their development and administration requires fundamental change to improve their accessibility and economics. Currently almost every biologics drug is administered as parenteral drug. This project to aims to develop model-based tools which can be used to investigate the possibility of oral delivery of biologics drugs. For this purpose, the project combines experimental and model based approaches to develop fundamental understanding regarding the delivery, transport and absorption of large-molecule drug in the gastro-intestinal tract. Different strategies to support bioavailability of protein drugs will be investigated using this tool. The knowledge gained from this research will ultimately be used develop a physiologically-based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model to predict and simulate the absorption kinetics of biologics as oral solid dosage forms. Such as in-silico model will predict the performance of the macromolecule formulations with respect to the expected plasma concentration-time profile and, therefore, increase the success and efficiency of oral macromolecule formulation development. The proposed knowledge framework can hence be used by biopharmaceutical companies.