Background: Transdermal drug delivery (TDD) is a method used to deliver a therapy into systemic circulation across the skin. Transdermal therapeutic administration is common practice in response to chronic inflammatory skin disease. However, subtherapeutic outcomes are prevalent without known cause. This is largely due to inter- and intraindividual variability of drug absorption through the skin. It is known that the inherent skin membrane function poses unique challenges to effective systemic drug delivery. Diffusion, metabolism, and other skin biophysics profiles and their contributions to drug response have yet to be fully elucidated.
Problem: The use of computational and predictive modelling poses potential to assist drug developers and clinicians in determining the most effective drugs for a given patient with their unique biological profile. Given the intricacies of biological interplay, it is important to determine which biological factors are the most predictive for drug delivery efficacy.
Why this model?: This one compartment model is used to simply illustrate the relationship between varied simulated rate constants and drug concentrations of the drug donor and acceptor as it relates to time
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune disease effecting around 1 million people in the US. This disease in associated with physical symptoms such as fatigue, weakness, pain and psychological symptoms such as mood problems and diminished sociability. MS also has been shown to be sexually biased toward females. In this project we have used the experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) and relapsing remitting experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (RREAE), the mouse model for MS. We hypothesized that EAE progression is associated with changes in muscle strength, balance, pain, and sociability and that these variations are linked to sex and/or strain. Our results indicate that strain but not sex influenced differences in muscle strength and balance during EAE, and both sex and strain have an impact on sociability and mechanical nociception, regardless of EAE disease status. Our goal is to provide some insight about the change in social behavior of MS patients and its effect on their social and day to day activities.
