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| About Stefan Lundquist (AstraZeneca) |
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Stefan Lundquist is Principal scientist and Team leader at the Department of Pharmacokinetics and Drug metabolism in the Discovery Research Area CNS & Pain Control, AstraZeneca, Sweden. In 2005 he was appointed Associate Professor at the University of Artois, France. His industrial career began in 1984 when he joined Kabi-Pharmacia and became director of a Drug Delivery Research group. In this position he was part of the team that developed the unique Diprivan formulation in collaboration with former ICI. The formulation was of key importance for the commercial success of Diprivan, which today belongs to Astra Zeneca´s more important products.
In 1990, he was recruited to Astra as responsible for developing new drug delivery techniques and novel applications of cell and tissue culture to study drug transport. In 1995 he pioneered the use of cell culture models of the BBB in the Astra Drug Discovery process.
He has also participated in several drug delivery technology projects aimed at increasing drug transport of macromolecules across the BBB.
His research today focuses on CNS pharmacokinetics, macromolecular transport and the physiology and pathophysiology of the cerebral microvasculature.
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The Blood-Brain Barrier in the CNS Drug Discovery Process
Stefan Lundquist (Department of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics , AstraZeneca R &D Sodertalje)
Models of the BBB are of great value in efforts to expand our understanding of the way the brain maintains its integrity and controls the in- and outflux of endogenous as well as therapeutic substances. Genomic and proteomic techniques have greatly expanded our knowledge of BBB function and the genes and proteins involved in inducing the BBB phenotype. Strategies to restore or protect the functionality of the BBB in various CNS pathologies in order to maintain brain homeostasis and normal signalling between brain cells may be of important therapeutic value. To optimise drug design and develop therapies targeted at disease mechanisms involving the BBB or to improve drug delivery to the CNS, require BBB models that adequately reflect in vivo conditions, and although it is true that in vitro models of the BBB is a simplification of the in vivo situation it is also true that cell based BBB assays are powerful and flexible experimental tools to study transport and the dynamic functions of the BBB in the normal and pathological state and that many such investigations would be difficult or even impossible to carry out in vivo. A shift from small molecules towards biopharmaceuticals in major pharmaceutical companies is likely to lead to increased activities in developing and evaluating strategies to improve delivery to the brain of large molecules. An integrative use of in vitro BBB models and in vivo techniques together with advances in medicinal chemistry and tailor-made design of antibodies, proteins and peptides are likely to be elements of key importance in order to produce CNS therapeutics with enhanced activity and improved BBB permeability characteristics.
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