Researching Mucus To Understand Drug Delivery Effectiveness
At the 2024 Society for Biomaterials Northeast Symposium, ChE Distinguished Professor Rebecca Carrier explained how her research examines mucus through multiple particle tracking to understand what drug delivery systems can permeate the mucosal barrier.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Cesareo Contreras. Main photo: Northeastern professor Rebecca Carrier is exploring how mucus impacts by drug delivery systems. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
How mucus is shaping drug delivery and medical research at Northeastern ‘gut lab’
Mucus is a thick, sticky substance that lines many parts of the body and plays an important role in protecting and lubricating vital tissues.
Mucus also plays an important role in how researchers develop drugs.
That topic is one of the key areas of interest for Rebecca Carrier, a Northeastern University professor of chemical engineering and the head of the university’s Advanced Drug Delivery Research Lab.
“So mucus, why is it so interesting?” Carrier asked recently in front of an audience at the Curry Student Center on the Boston campus. “It lines all our wet epithelial surfaces. It really forms this first barrier between us and the outside world.”
Carrier was one of the more than a dozen leading biomaterials experts who spoke during the recent Society for Biomaterials 2024 Northeast Symposium.
The two-day conference hosted by Northeastern brought together industry experts to discuss the biomaterial realm—from immune engineering and regenerative medicine to bioelectric materials and biointerfaces.
Mucus is a natural biomaterial and plays an important role in helping to smell, reproduce and have proper gut health, but it also plays an important role in how drugs are absorbed in the body, Carrier says.
At a macro level, a mucosal lining has a slim, shining appearance. At a microscopic level, it appears like “a continuous blanket of material.”
“As you zoom in looking down on that continuous blanket of material, you start to get a sense for this nano-porous network,” she says.
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Northeastern professor Rebecca Carrier heads the university’s Advanced Drug Delivery Research Lab. Photo by Alyssa Stone/Northeastern University
In understanding how to navigate this network, it’s not only important to understand its physical characteristics but also its chemical nature, Carrier says.
Mucus is primarily composed of molecules called mucins and they communicate and come together in a number of different ways, including through disulfide bonds, hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic interactions, and electrostatic interactions.
“Those same types of interactions which occur between mucin molecules can also be important in controlling things that are trying to be transported through the mucus batter, like drug delivery systems and drugs,” she says.
To study these interactions, Carrier and other researchers in her lab use a technique called “multiple particle tracking.”
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