Drug Delivery and Translational Research - Featured Article: August 2022

Read the featured article from the August 2022 issue!

(this opens in a new tab)

Summary: Schizophrenia is characterized by cognitive impairment and psychotic symptoms that can only be mitigated with the chronic administration of antipsychotics, such as risperidone. Biodegradable, 20 μm microparticles (microPLates) are engineered for the sustained release of risperidone over several weeks. The therapeutic efficacy of one single intraperitoneal deposition of risperidone microPlates is compared to the daily administration of free risperidone in heterozygous knockout mice for dysbindin-1, a clinically relevant mouse model of cognitive and psychiatric liability. In temporal order object recognition tasks, mice treated with risperidone microPlates outperform those receiving free risperidone up to 2, 4, 8 and 12 weeks of observation. These results suggest that the sustained release of clinically relevant antipsychotics from one-time inoculated microPLates can rescue the cognitive impairment in dysbindin mice for several weeks.