The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, FDA, has granted research funding of approximately one million dollars (approximately 950,000 euros) to Professor Arto Urtti of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Eastern Finland. The three-year project investigates the effects of eye drop preservatives on the absorption of eye medications from eye drops. The results of the study will help improve the understanding on how different preservatives affect local absorption of several drug substances which will facilitate the development of new and generic eye drops and their evaluation by the FDA. Research Director Tetsuya Terasaki and University Researcher Eva del Amo are actively involved in the research as experts.
In the second project, a virtual calculation model is developed for predicting the concentrations of drug substances given as eye drops in eye tissues. This project is funded by the FDA as a collaboration with the American CFD research center, from which part of the funding is channeled to the University of Eastern Finland for Urtti’s research group. In Kuopio, experimental research is carried out with eye suspensions. The results help the development of a virtual model in CFD, which in turn helps the FDA in the evaluation work of new and generic pharmaceuticals. The four-year funding allocated to Kuopio is around 350,000 euros.
