Thomas Ullrich

Title : Drug design for the development of long-acting injectables

Abstract:

Long-acting injectable (LAI) medications represent the combination of a powerful drug substance and an injectable drug formulation that guarantees that the affected tissue is consistently exposed to the active molecule for an extended therapeutic treatment period without eliciting unwanted side effects. Many marketed LAI drugs owe their success to a formulation principle that is perfectly tailored to the drug substance, yet to date there is no comprehensive overview of how drug molecules can be designed in a smart way to facilitate and accelerate technical formulation development at a later stage. This presentation will summarize the key properties of low-molecular weight drugs that are predestined for different LAI formulations and suggest design principles as well as operational flow chart elements to streamline preclinical research and development (R&D) at the interface of chemical and pharmaceutical sciences.

Audience Take Away Notes:

• Design principles of injectable drug products for patient compliance and safety
• Properties of injectable vs. oral drug substances
• Guidance for the discovery and optimization of long-acting injectables (LAI)
• Practical aspects of LAI research (flow charts and assays)
• Importance of early collaboration between Research and Development

Biography:

Thomas Ullrich studied Chemistry at Vienna University of Technology, graduated as PhD in 1999, and joined the National Institutes of Health in the United States as a Post-doctoral Fellow. In 2001 he started his industrial career with Novartis in Vienna and Basel and became a Group Leader and Director in Medicinal Chemistry. Thomas’s team has advanced several drug candidates into clinical trials to treat musculoskeletal diseases, exploring long-acting injectable drug products and studying the physical and chemical properties of successful molecules. He has published more than 30 research papers in peer-reviewed journals.