Innovations in Targeted, Drug Combination Synchronized & Long-Acting Therapy

WELCOME!

The TLC-ART ¹ program, founded by Drs. Ho and Collier, leverages on technical, regulatory, and clinical innovations in the fundamental and biomedical research translation to accelerate discovery into product concepts that will have impacts on infections and cancer or other chronic diseases.

Our internationally known scientists and physicians, plus students are dedicated to improving drug-combination safety and effectiveness through innovation in engineering drug combinations that are stable and able to synchronize in cells and tissue of interest while reducing off-target toxicity-related organs. Due to the discovery of DcNP ² and other technologies that enable synchronized delivery of current drugs of interest, defined regulatory and clinical pathways are in place to accelerate the translation of innovative product concepts to clinical testing.

TLC-ART team focuses on current drug combinations for HIV to achieve sustained viral suppression as drug combination is needed to maximally knock out virus and HIV-infected cells.  With the knowledge of “Undetectable = Untransmittable,” treating people to undetectable levels of HIV is a path to preventing newly infected people ³.

The discovery of the DcNP-enabled drug-combination for current HIV drugs, lopinavir, ritonavir, and tenofovir, assembled as the TLC-ART 101 injectable product also extends plasma and cell drug presence, the TLC-ART 101 is considered long-acting drug product candidate, which is currently a clinical-stage product of the TLC-ART program. Phase 1 clinical testing is funded by NIAID/NIH.

Current focuses include infectious diseases (HIV & HBV treatments) and cancers (breast cancer & pancreatic cancer with  GT-DcNP). The projects are supported through public-private partnerships and we thank our sponsors and supporters for their support. Major funding was received from the NIH and Unitaid.

We welcome your input, research support, participation, and donations by either making a gift or donating directly to our faculty or students.

Product Pipeline

Publications

Footnotes

1. TLC-ART: Targeted, Long-acting and Combination Anti-Retroviral Therapy of the Department of Pharmaceutics.
2. DcNP: Drug-combination Nanoparticles
3. “The body of scientific evidence-to-date has established that there is effectively no risk of sexual transmission of HIV when the partner living with HIV has a durably undetectable viral load, validating the U=U message of HIV treatment as prevention” – Dr A Fauci (CROI Meeting 2023, Seattle)