The organisation - The Advanced Drug Delivery and Drug Targeting Program of the Department of Pharmaceutics at Utrecht University, headed by Prof. W.E. Hennink, aims at providing new strategies to solve delivery problems encountered by pharmacologically-active compounds. The core activity of the department is the design and pre-clinical testing of tailor-made drug delivery systems for site-specific, time- and/or rate-controlled delivery of small molecular weight drugs, therapeutic proteins, nucleic acids (including DNA and siRNA) and antigens for therapy and prevention of life-threatening diseases such as cancer, inflammation and infectious diseases.

Dr C.F. van Nostrum is Associate Progessor at the Department of Pharmaceutics. His research activites include the design, synthesis and characterisation of polymers for hydrogels, micelles and nanoparticles and their application as drug gene delivery devices, including the delivery of photosensitisers for photodynamic therapy. Dr van Nostrum was also pivotal in the development of thermosensitive and biodegradable polymer micelles, the work on which has recently developed into a spin-off company, Cristal Delivery.