Breaking down barriers to foster new Cyclodextrin-based applications for healthcare by implementing sustainable design principles

Cyclodextrins (CD) have already gained several market applications as excipients in drug and vaccine formulations. They are very appealing platforms for the development of therapeutic applications and new CD-based systems are continuously proposed. In this frame easily prepared CD polymers frequently outstand the performance of the corresponding CD monomers. Nevertheless, application of new CDs as drug or delivery system in the clinics does not take off in spite of their most promising features. This is mainly due to a lack in transfer of knowledge between the academic world and the private sector focusing on CD for biomedical applications. The consortium formed by a multidisciplinary team, all with interest in CD and nanomedicines, accepts the challenge to bring CD-based systems closer to clinical application. To reach this goal an intense secondment scheme for young and experienced researchers is envisaged with activities that are all contributing to the scientific pursuit of CD progress. Activities focus on the design of sustainable syntheses of new CD, full characterization of new functionalized CD, the preparation of CD delivery systems for therapeutics and the study of the biological behavior of the CD-based nanomedicines in 2D and 3D models. The teams will embrace, already from the design stage, the production standards affording compliance with GMP for medicine development and prefer strategic approaches in line with the EU 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The consortium features 11 partners with 4 coming from the private sector. Two of them hold concrete interest in the exploitation of research results as their core business focuses on CD for biomedical applications. This intersectoral and interdisciplinary team will foster new applications of CD-based systems as drugs, delivery systems or sensors and participating staff will enrich their profile with scientific and soft skills that are easily transferred to other research topics or sectors.