Computational Investigation of Encapsulated Antibody Release Kinetics

Drug Delivery Systems (DDS) are utilized in treating diseases through controlling the release of antibodies in a targeted location. One such form of DDSs are biodegradable polymer-based implants to circumvent traditional treatment processes such as antibody injections. In diseases such as macular degeneration, intravitreal injections are administered on a weekly/biweekly basis. These injections are painful for patients and prove inconvenient to source transportation to and from appointments, as macular degeneration may cause partial blindness. Previous efforts have been conducted to create a biodegradable ocular DDS to administer antibody dosages; however, physical testing takes long periods of time and is unable to observe the underlying mechanisms during the antibody diffusion process.

In this work, we investigate antibody release kinetics through a porous membrane to provide insight into long-term DDSs by employing molecular dynamics simulations and graph theory calculations. Through this analysis, our results demonstrate that the release rate of antibodies show strong correlation with the effective path length and the global efficiency of the pore network.