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Mucoadhesive mouth patches for controlled
drug delivery

CH. KLEBER,  S. SZUNERITS, R. WOITEK

Oral diseases, while largely preventable, pose a major health burden and affect people throughout their lifetime, causing pain, discomfort, and disfigurement.

Oral health has thus been identified by the World Health Organization as one of the top ten standards of human health. Oral ulcers are a highly prevalent mouth disease interfere with eating and speaking with different degrees of impact on the health of the whole body. We aim at investigating the role of mucoadhesive mouth patches, formed by electrospinning reduced graphene oxide containing polymer mats, for the treatment of mouth ulcer. This approach takes advantage of adhering to the ulcer site, thus delivering a drug locally and protecting the ulcer from mechanic stress, it prolongs the action of the drug, reduces the number of doses, and alleviates pain.

Mucoadhesive mouth patches for controlled drug delivery

The work is based on a recently accepted article on insulin delivery using mucoadhesive patches and together with the group for Medical Image Analysis and AI (MIAAI) at the DPU we are exploring different potential clinical applications including the delivery of glucagone for the reduction of bowel peristalsis during magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Photothermal Activatable Mucoadhesive Fiber Mats for On-Demand Delivery of Insulin via Buccal and Corneal Mucosa

Research Directors

~ CH. KLEBER,  S. SZUNERITS, R. WOITEK ~

  • Juan Allegretto
    I'm Juan Allegretto, originally from Argentina. I did my PhD focusing on the synthesis and characterization of Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOFs) films, in the Soft Matter Laboratory, under the supervision of Dr. Omar Azzaroni and Dr. Matías Rafti. I also worked as a postdoc for 6 months in the same lab, integrating MOFs into solid-state nanochannels for microfluidic membranes with highly specific separation and ionic transport. I'm currently employed by DPU as Junior Researcher, being the Project lead of the ESPRIT project "Tailoring Plasmonics & MOFs: Synergy for Odorant sensing" from FWF, on which I'm working under the mentoring of Dr. Jakub Dostalek in the Biosensor Technologies group.
  • Naoto Asai Ph. D
    Naoto Asai is a full-time Junior Researcher at the LiST (International Laboratory for Life Sciences and Technology) research group at the Danube Private University. His research focuses on the development of optical biosensors for the detection of biomarkers. He joined this group to take part in a project entitled Digital Plasmon Biosensor (DIPLAB). His core research interest is to improve biosensing performance through cutting-edge technologies utilizing material science, biotechnology, and computer science. He received a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Kansai University, a master's degree in Engineering, and a doctor degree's in Engineering from the Graduate School of Kansai University.
  • Dr. Hannes Dörfler
    Dr Hannes Dörfler is a chemist by training and received his PhD from the Molecular Systems Biology Department at the University of Vienna. After a three-year postdoctoral phase at the company Boehringer Ingelheim in Germany where he was working on Omics-based biomarkers, he joined DPU as a staff scientist. Hannes Dörfler has expertise in biochemistry and pharmaceutical development, and also works with multivariate statistical analysis of big data towards pattern recognition and biological interpretation.
  • Dr. Jakub Dostalek
    Optical biosensor technologie for biomarker analysis Jakub Dostalek received his PhD in 2006 from the Charles University in Prague and worked as a research assistant at the Institute of Photonics and Electronics, Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) until 2006. After his postdoctoral training and spending one year as a project leader at Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz in 2008, he moved to the Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna in 2009, where he worked from 2015 as senior scientist until 2023. Since 2020, he serves as a lecturer at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna. In 2021, he assumed senior researcher position at the Institute of Physics, CAS, in Prague. From 2023 he is active in LiST at Donau Private University. His research interests concern combined aspects of nanophotonics and biomaterials research applied in optical sensors and biosensors, and light management in thin film optical devices. Near-field and guided wave optics, plasmonics, biointerfaces, amplification strategies in optical spectroscopy, biomolecular interaction analysis. Analytical technologies for rapid and sensitive detection of chemical and biological species relevant to medical diagnostics.
  • Katharina Schmidt Ph. D
    Katharina is an ambitious PhD student with the aim to develop plasmonic biosensors to observe well-seperated single molecules for ultrasensitiv cancer biomarker detection at the Danube Private University in the LiST Laboratory under the supervision of Dr. Jakub Dostalek. She achieved her individual Master's degree in Nanobioscience at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, as well as her Bachelor in Food- and Biotechnology.
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