3D polymer matrix device for dual drug delivery and simultaneous treatment of acute malaria and malaria transmission - 3D4D2

Project summary

Malaria causes millions of deaths and poses significant economic challenges worldwide. There is an urgent need to improve malaria treatment by simplifying the administration of drugs and to make it patient friendly to the malaria-affected population, especially for people in poverty-associated regions. The current proposal aims to develop a novel injectable 3D polymer scaffold with controlled dual-drug release to sustainably provide therapeutic antimalarial drugs needed to treat acute malaria disease as well as to block the transmission of the malaria parasite to the vector mosquitoes. The device will be applied only once via an intradermal injection and will release two different drugs, each one encapsulated in a custom-made nanoparticle delivery system. This will enable a significant progress in the application of functional systems able to release concomitantly two drugs with different release profiles, making at the same time their uptake patient friendly and easily applicable.