The Indiana CTSI is excited to announce a new story feature called “Emerging Leaders.” This recurring feature will highlight researchers, program managers, administrative team members and others from across the organization who have demonstrated their potential to make a major impact on their team, in the organization, or in their field. To nominate an Emerging Leader, contact Hannah Calkins.
Andrew Otte, PhD, first came to Purdue University as a student to pursue a career as a pharmacist. But after a stint in a hospital pharmacy during his third semester, he decided that path wasn’t meant for him.
“Granted, my grades were beyond horrible, and I wouldn’t have gotten accepted anyway!” he said.
Fortunately, he found his stride in the pharmaceutical sciences. Today, Otte is a Research Assistant Professor at the Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Industrial and Molecular Pharmaceutics at Purdue. His lab focuses on drug delivery with a specific emphasis on the development and characterization of long acting injectables.
Recently, he was awarded $9.85 million from the National Institutes of Health to develop a long-acting biodegradable implant of the drug buprenorphine, which is used for the treatment of opioid use disorder. While earlier versions of this kind of intervention required surgical implantation and removal, Otte is aiming to create a more patient-friendly product that that is easier to administer and doesn’t need to be removed.
He says his team has identified several candidates that have shown promising in vitro data, and in vivo pharmacokinetic studies will begin in early 2024.
“The sooner we can get this into the clinic the better, as overdose deaths continue to rise largely due to the fentanyl crisis,” he said, citing that there were more than 110,000 deaths in the 12 months preceding April 2023.
Otte enjoys that his work spans the continuum from basic material science to pharmacokinetics to regulatory science – and “getting to work on all these areas simultaneously is really exciting,” he said.
He acknowledged that many colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry work on projects that never make it out of the lab. That’s just the nature of the field, he said.
But, he said, “knowing this particular area of research is much later stage, and closer the clinic, motivates me to get into the lab each and every day.”
Otte’s colleague and mentor, Kinam Park, PhD, said that Otte has a “unique strength” in this field.
“His knowledge and know-how in utilizing biodegradable PLGA polymers to make clinical products by going through complex FDA approval processes is second to none,” said Park, who has been collaborating with Otte for the past decade.
Otte is grateful for the institutional support and resources that have made his work possible.
“From scaling-up our processes, to having a pre-Investigational New Grant meeting with the FDA, we’ve been fortunate to have a number of experts in the field help guide our team and learn about all the aspects of trying to bring something into the clinic,” he said.
Additionally, he said having a mentor of Park’s stature has been “invaluable.”
During this project, Otte will rely heavily on Indiana CTSI service cores. The Purdue Translational Pharmacology (PTP) will assist with the in vivo preclinical studies, and subsequent plasma analysis will be done through the Metabolite Profiling Facility (MPF).
“We’ve used these facilities for all our projects and are very fortunate to have these resources and this expertise right here on campus at Purdue,” he said. “We’re excited to continue working with these cores on this new project.”
Additionally, Park’s lab is developing a long-acting injectable formulation of naltrexone, which is also used to treat opioid use disorder.
Though Park said that Otte was one of only a handful of scientists with his specific expertise and abilities nationally, it is an important field, and Otte has guidance for junior colleagues who may be interested in following his footsteps.
“I don’t know what I don’t know—and that’s a lot,” he said. “So don’t be afraid to ask questions.”
