This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 955756.

Shaida Panbachi

ESR5: Novel deep eutectic solvent (DES) formulations

University of Applied Sciences & Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Institute of Pharma Technology (FHNW)

Supervisor: Prof. Martin Kuentz (FHNW)

Planned secondments: Zentiva (Purpose: Industrial feasibility of novel deep eutectic systems)

Project Description

The main aim of the project is to evaluate thermodynamic and other computational methods to propose novel Deep Eutectic System (DES), to study drug-excipient miscibility experimentally and correlate observed mixture characteristics with those predicted by in silico approaches. On the industrial half, the aim will be to develop innovative DES technology that meets industrial priorities in terms of scalability, regulatory approval and commercial viability.

Background

Shaida Panbachi is a 26-year-old Iranian-Dane, enrolled in the InPharma European Industrial Doctorate program as a PhD student starting June 2021. Shaida has great interest for solubility enhancement of pharmaceutical active ingredients, novel pharmaceutical formulations, and improved research and development techniques. The fascination for these topics flourished during her 5-year period as a pharmacy student at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH). Here she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Science (2018), and her Master of Science (MSc) degree in Pharmacy (2020). Novel formulations and the development thereof are topics of great focus at UCPH and are therefore heavily covered throughout the programme by various courses such as Formulation Development – Molecule to Human, Pharmacy I – Liquid and Semi-Solid Formulations, Pharmacy II – Solid Formulations, Pharmaceutics and Drug Development and finally, Advanced Pharmaceutics which was led by Thomas Rades. Shaida developed great fascination for these subjects early on in her studies, allowing her to become the leader of the bachelor’s dissertation project focusing on the development of novel formulations containing naproxen. The group managed to successfully formulate an extended-release oral dosage form and a novel cutaneous preparation of naproxen. This project built the fundament for Shaida’s expertise in formulation development, especially in the field of oral preparations.

Inspired by the exciting formulation-development research and novel techniques within the solubility enhancement field, Shaida continued the journey of pharmaceutical research and development with solid dosage forms as a main theme throughout her master’s studies. With the supervision of Korbinian Löbmann in the Solid-State Pharmaceutics department at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH), an individual study unit was designed as a research project. The project involved the investigation of the solid-state properties of drug-loaded- and pure mesoporous silica as a solubility enhancing carrier, and the tabletability of this novel formulation. Shaida finalized this project with a full-mark (Danish-scale: 12) and paved the way to an exclusive opportunity to pursue a master’s thesis project at Merck KGaA in Germany, in collaboration with Finn Bauer, Gudrun Birk, and Daniel Price. Here, the idea was to saturate the mesoporous silica with amorphous active pharmaceutical ingredients, and to utilize the stabilizing property of the silica to overcome the problem of amorphous instability in terms of crystallization. In this project, the goal of developing an oral dosage form was also successfully achieved. Shaida graduated with a full mark on this project and aimed for the InPharma ESR 5 position.

“The purpose of the InPharma EU project aligns with my goals and interests in life by giving me the opportunity to delve into the depths of solubility improvement as a means of providing better medicine to the world, utilize deep eutectic solvents as less toxic solvent alternatives in all dimensions of the pharmaceutical industry, and to employ novel prediction tools and technologies to avoid waste of resources in research. This will be my contribution to the facilitation of an end-to-end animal-free modelling approach to oral drug product development.”

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