Discovery & Development Europe 2025: Formulation & Drug Delivery Congress
July 1-2, 2025
Basel, Switzerland

Invited lecture:
Oral Delivery Of Peptide And Protein Drugs – Oral Delivery of GLP-1 Analogues

Prof. Dr. A. Bernkop-Schnürch
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8th European Cyclodextrin Conference
September 9-12, 2025
Milano, Italy

Invited lecture:
Thiolated Cyclodextrins in Drug Delivery

Prof. Dr. A. Bernkop-Schnürch
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Buccal drug delivery systems

The buccal mucosa offers several advantages for controlled drug delivery for extended periods of time. The mucosa is well supplied with both vascular and lymphatic drainage and pre-systemic elimination in the gastrointestinal tract and first-pass metabolism in the liver are avoided. With the right drug delivery system the permeability and the local environment of the mucosa can be controlled and manipulated in order to achieve demanded drug levels. Due to the comparatively high mucoadhesive properties of thiomers buccal adhesion of the drug delivery system can be guaranteed. Generally, the development of intraoral delivery systems includes:

• buccal permeation studies
  
  
• evaluation of the influence of permeation enhancers
  
  
• buccal mucoadhesion studies
  
  
• design and optimisation of buccal drug delivery systems
  
  
• in vivo studies

Our recent publications in this field:

Laffleur F, Fischer A, Schmutzler M, Hintzen F, Bernkop-Schnürch A. Evaluation of functional characteristics of preactivated thiolated chitosan as potential therapeutic agent for dry mouth syndrome. Acta Biomater. 2015 Jul 15;21:123-31
Dünnhaupt S, Kammona O, Waldner C, Kiparissides C, Bernkop-Schnürch A. Nano-carrier systems: Strategies to overcome the mucus gel barrier. Eur J Pharm Biopharm. 2015 in press.
Hauptstein S, Hintzen F, Müller C, Ohm M, Bernkop-Schnürch A. Development and in vitro evaluation of a buccal drug delivery system based on preactivated thiolated pectin. Drug Dev Ind Pharm. 2014 Nov;40(11):1530-7.
Laffleur F, Shahnaz G, Islambulchilar Z, Bernkop-Schnürch A. Design and in vitro evaluation of a novel polymeric excipient for buccal applications. Future Med Chem. 2013 Apr;5(5):511-22.

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Thiomatrix joined the EU-project TENTACLE (101191747) focusing on the use of thiomers for in situ bioprinting.
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