Research on Drug Transporters—Past and Future

Abstract

Based on my research experience over past 3 decades on drug transporters, this review focuses on: i) importance of molecular biopharmaceutics, ii) recent progress in identification and characterization of drug transporters and iii) illustrative cases of successful drug delivery to target organs via transporters. With the help of great progress in key pharmaceutical technologies, we are now entering a new era of drug delivery. Although several drug transporters have been utilized as novel delivery systems, transport mechanisms for the majority of drugs are still unknown. Therefore, we have to identify all the participants in order to establish the potential utilities of this approach. We require an efficient screening system to pick appropriate transporter (s) that can be used for delivery and also for target and/or lead discovery. Another aspect that demands careful consideration may be pharmacokinetic drug-drug interaction at the transporter and the effects of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of drug transporters.