Non-Clinical Vascular Infusion Technology, Volume II PDF

Preface

In 2000 the rst book covering pre-clinical infusion techniques was published by Taylor & Francis (Handbook of Pre-Clinical Continuous Intravenous Infusion, Healing and Smith, editors) and this has become the singular reference source for this technology up to the present time. However, it is now recognised that a number of the techniques have been rened since that time, and also that new equipment and improved equipment were on the market. We therefore accepted the request from the publishers to provide a more current techniques manual, and have taken the opportunity not only to reƒect current expertise by including authors who are the current leaders in the eld of commercial infusion technology and, therefore, have the most practical experience (hence also providing the most robust background data sets), but have also approached the topic from a fresh angle and structured the chapters differently so that this new volume truly represents a novel approach rather than attempting to simply update the original reference book. To complete the reference material on this technology, there is also a companion volume (Non-Clinical Vascular Infusion Technology: The Science) that covers the scientic principles behind the delivery systems, from both physical and physiological standpoints, and also covers formulation-specic considerations.

There are numerous pharmaceuticals on the market or undergoing clinical trials that require intravenous infusion, for either short or longer periods, intermittently or continuously, and so this book should be of interest to many in the pharmaceutical as well as research areas. These applications include chemotherapy (Skubitz 1997; Vallejos et al. 1997; Ikeda et al. 1998; Patel et al. 1998; Stevenson et al. 1999; Valero et al. 1999), and the treatment of various diseases such as HIV (Levy et al. 1999), hepatitis C (Schenker et al. 1997) and cardiovascular disease (Phillips et al. 1997), as well as during and following problematical surgical procedures (Bacher et˜al. 1998; Llamas et al. 1998; Menart et al. 1998). It is a regulatory and ethical requirement that these pharmaceuticals rst be tested on both rodents and non-rodents by the clinical route, and so the range of pre-clinical experimental models is covered. The technique of prolonged intravenous delivery in conscious, free-moving animal models has also broadened the opportunities to study and evaluate the safety and efcacy of those products that have limiting biological or chemical properties such as half-life and formulation issues.