5 Areas Of Drug Delivery Innovation To Watch In 2025

By Tim Sandle, Ph.D.

In recent years, novel medical technologies like cell and gene therapies have demonstrated significant promise for treating a range of diseases like cancer and heart disease. Other advances in medicine have focused on repairing or promoting the natural repair of internal injuries. Several of these potential breakthroughs have been hampered by a lack of effective ways to deliver biological treatments into the body. 

Some of the barriers are beginning to fall through advances in drug delivery technology and 2024 has seen several advancements, many of which are set to continue to progress into 2025. This article assesses five interesting innovations in drug delivery.

1. Micro Robotics

A promising innovation for drug delivery is the use of micro robotics. This involves using tiny, soft robots that are highly dexterous and able to crawl, spin, and swim to enter narrow spaces within the human body to dispense medicines.

Grain-sized soft robots were developed in 2024 that can be controlled using magnetic fields, enabling targeted drug delivery. Trials performed at Nanyang Technological University demonstrated how miniature robots can transport up to four different drugs and then release them in a series of reprogrammable orders and doses. The study recorded speeds of 0.30 mm and 16.5 mm per second, depending on the area of the body, with a robot releasing a different drug in each section. The use of magnetic fields enabled sufficient control of each robot and movements to continue for up to 8 hours.¹

Developments in drug delivery robotics will continue into 2025, seeking to address improving control robotic dosing and avoiding responses by the body’s immune system to the robots. There remains a tendency for the immune system to react to foreign objects by depositing a dense layer of fibrous scar tissue around the robot, inhibiting its function.² When delivery vehicles encounter multiple barriers on route to their target, this can result in the premature release of the drugs from the cargo and, hence, an unsuccessful outcome; the robotic design helps to lower such risks.

The control of dosing also represents an important area for further inquiry. When the infusion rate can be adjusted, this allows medics to compensate for differences in drug pharmacokinetics caused by body composition, genetic makeup, interactions with other medications being taken and foods consumed, and circadian fluctuations, enabling more personalized treatments.³

2. Materials Engineering

Natural forces can be harnessed to trigger targeted release of molecules. University of Manchester scientists developed a first-of-its-kind molecular device that controls the release of multiple small molecules using force.

The basis of this is a form of interlocked molecule termed rotaxane. Under the influence of mechanical force (including forces present at an injured or damaged site), the material triggers the release of functional molecules, such as a healing agent.⁴ This could extend to the site of a tumor as technology progresses.

Multi-molecule release should also be possible. The design utilizes two polymer chains attached to a central ring-like structure that slide along an axle supporting the cargo, effectively releasing different molecules in response to force application.

3. Nanoparticles

Recent years have seen many innovations involving nanoparticles; however, there remain areas of the body and types of medical conditions where nanotechnology has remained unsuitable. One of these areas appears to have been addressed during 2024.

Technologists at the University of Rochester Medical Center have succeeded in delivering drugs to a surgically repaired tendon. Nanotechnology has the potential to reduce scar tissue formation as well as improving mechanical function. Prior to devising a treatment plan, medics will be required to undertake a spatial transcriptomic profile to define a molecular map of the healing tendon. Following this, a peptide is combined with a protein called tartrate resistant acid phosphatase and deployed to deliver medication directly to the healing tendon.⁵

This offers an alternative and, possibly improved, way to repair tendon damage compared with the more traditional use of sutures.

4. Extracellular Vesicles

By mimicking natural processes used by viruses, Northwestern University researchers have used extracellular vesicles to construct a drug delivery system capable of binding to target cells and effectively transferring drugs inside.

Extracellular vesicles are tiny, virus-sized nanoparticles that human cells naturally produce (as lipid bilayer-delimited particles).⁶ The researchers drew on synthetic biology to build DNA "programs" that, when inserted into "producer" cells, direct those cells to self-assemble custom vesicles. The programs also can direct cells to produce and load the vesicles with biological drugs.⁷

So far, the research is at the proof-of-concept stage where the particles have successfully delivered biological drugs (as with CRISPR gene-editing agents) to immune system T cells.

The future possibilities are tantalizing, including the ability to replace faulty genes or to deliver healthy new genes or cells into a patient. This application of gene and cell therapies holds considerable promise for treating a wide range of diseases. The delivery vehicle enables gene therapies to enter the body in order to transfer genetic material into specific cells to treat a disease.

5. Normalizing Biological Systems

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have taken an existing drug, designed to normalize blood vessels surrounding tumors (to improve drug delivery to cancer cells), and used it to enhance the delivery of anti-microbial medications that can kill tuberculosis bacteria residing in the lungs. This approach is designed to overcome the problem of obstacles that interfere when directing a powerful antimicrobial to its target site.

Such obstacles include poorly functioning blood vessels and extracellular matrices (networks of proteins and other molecules that surround tissues in the body), both of which reduce blood flow and, hence, interfere with drug delivery. In the case of tuberculosis, the infectious bacterium residues in granulomas where the organism can succeed in evading the body's immune system. Unless the antimicrobial can reach the organisms, therapy is ineffective.

To improve the opportunity for the medication to reach the target site (in this case tiny clusters of white blood cells and other tissues), the medications bevacizumab, which acts on blood vessels, and losartan, which targets the extracellular matrix, can be used to improve the chances of an antimicrobial reaching the organisms.⁸

To date, this process has only been tested in an animal model, yet the success in enhancing antimicrobial drug delivery, promoting anti-bacterial host responses and improving health outcomes, makes this an area that warrants further study in 2025.

References

1. Yang, Z., Xu, C. Lee, J. Lum, G. Magnetic Miniature Soft Robot with Reprogrammable Drug‐Dispensing Functionalities: Toward Advanced Targeted Combination Therapy. Advanced Materials, 2024; DOI: 10.1002/adma.202408750
2. Horejs, CM. Soft robotic drug-delivery device overcomes fibrotic encapsulation. Nat Rev Bioeng 1, 693 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-023-00122-9
3. DeRidder, L., Hare, K., Lopes, A. et al. Closed-loop automated drug infusion regulator: A clinically translatable, closed-loop drug delivery system for personalized drug dosing. Med, 2024; DOI: 10.1016/j.medj.2024.03.020
4. Chen, L., Nixon, R., De Bo., G. Force-controlled release of small molecules with a rotaxane actuator. Nature, 2024; 628 (8007): 320 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07154-0
5. Adjei-Sowah, E., Chandrasiri, I., Xiao, B. et al. Development of a nanoparticle-based tendon-targeting drug delivery system to pharmacologically modulate tendon healing. Science Advances, 2024; 10 (25) DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn2332
6. Chen, T-Y., Gonzalez-Kozlova, E., Soleymani, T. et al. Extracellular vesicles carry distinct proteo-transcriptomic signatures that are different from their cancer cell of origin. iScience, 2022; 25 (6): 104414
7. Stranford, D., Simons, L., Berman, K. et al. Genetically encoding multiple functionalities into extracellular vesicles for the targeted delivery of biologics to T cells. Nature Biomedical Engineering, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41551-023-01142-x
8. Datta, M., Via, L., V. et al. Normalizing granuloma vasculature and matrix improves drug delivery and reduces bacterial burden in tuberculosis-infected rabbits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024; 121 (14) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2321336121

About The Author:

Tim Sandle, Ph.D., is a pharmaceutical professional with wide experience in microbiology and quality assurance. He is the author of more than 30 books relating to pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and life sciences, as well as over 170 peer-reviewed papers and some 500 technical articles. Sandle has presented at over 200 events and he currently works at Bio Products Laboratory Ltd. (BPL), and he is a visiting professor at the University of Manchester and University College London, as well as a consultant to the pharmaceutical industry. Visit his microbiology website at https://www.pharmamicroresources.com.