Meet Our Current Fellows

Meet Our Current Fellows

Milad Asgarpour Current Fellow Milad Asgarpour Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: Multiscale predictive model for continuous pharmaceutical co-crystal formation via twinscrew granulator (CoCrym) The way we collectively communicate, set rules, settle down and so on is a complex pattern which leads us toward a good or bad future/society. The same thing is happening for molecules. In order to motivate molecules to move toward our goals, i.e. improved quality of medicines, we need to understand the way they talk to each other and their tendency and behaviour when they are in a group (as mixtures). As human-beings, we seek out people who match and complement us; in a way, the same thing happens to molecules. They approach or avoid each other. Also, we tend to join or leave groups, clubs and make our subcultures like teenagers or adults with different interests and goals. This also happens to molecules as well, they gather around themselves and grow (nucleation, agglomerations, etc.), or leave (breakage, dissolution, etc.) and so on. I am trying to investigate these behaviours for pharmaceutical molecules so that we can improve the quality of medicines! Milad is a graduate of University of Tehran in Chemical Engineering (B.Sc. & M.Sc.). He then moved to Beijing to work with Prof. Carlos Andrea Palma in Institute of Physics at Chinese Academic of Sciences. In Hong Kong, he joined School of Energy and Environment in CityU and then moved to Moscow to collaborate with SkolTech multiscale modelling group. Milad, in Oct 2018, visited Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung GmbH, Dusseldorf, Germany. He joined University of Limerick as a PROCESS fellow in Oct 2019 to work with Prof. Gavin Walker.	Dr Vijith Kumar Current Fellow Dr Vijith Kumar Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: Chalcogen and Halogen Bonding for the Synthesis of Multi-component Pharmaceutical Materials: Crystal Engineering to Formulation (MULTI-xTAL) Vijith earned a Master's degree in Analytical Chemistry from Mangalore University. After working for a short time in pharmaceutical industry he moved to Indian institute of Science, Bangalore and worked as a research fellow with Professor T. N Guru Row from 2012-2013 in the area of chemical crystallography and materials design. In 2017, he obtained a PhD degree for the study of Halogen and hydrogen bond based crystal engineering from Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy, under the supervision of Professor Giuseppe Resnati. During his doctoral studies, he worked three months as visiting researcher with Professor Makoto Fujita at University of Tokyo, Japan. Soon after PhD, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the same University with Professor Pierangelo Metrangolo for a year (2017-2018) in the area of halogen bond mediated macromolecular self-assembly. Later, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor David L. Bryce at University of Ottawa, Canada (2018-2019) in the scope of solid-state NMR spectroscopy to probe the noncovalent interactions. His current research at Professor Mike Zawarorko’s group focuses on the design and development of new multi-component pharmaceutical materials based on the crystal engineering principles to address the issue of poor (bio) pharmaceutical properties of active pharmaceutical ingredients. GoogleScholar	Dr Mahdi Ghadiri Current Fellow Dr Mahdi Ghadiri Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: Flow chemistry for advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing (FLOWRE) Nowadays, one of the biggest challenges facing pharma industry is inefficient manufacturing. As a result, the pharmaceutical industry wastes around $50 billion a year. An appropriate solution to resolve the problem is development of continuous pharmaceutical manufacture. FLOWRE will work toward addressing development of a novel continuous drug synthesis. Mahdi is a Chemical and Biochemical engineer with BEng degree in Chemical Engineering, MEng degree in Chemical Engineering, separation processes (solvent extraction and CFD simulation of membrane processes), and PhD in development a quantification method to measure metal recovery in bioprocess using X-ray µCT. He worked for two years as a research assistant on modelling and simulation of membrane separation processes. His previous work has refined his technical skills, particularly, analytical techniques, and good practices regarding bioprocess, solvent extraction and (bio)leaching of metal ions, modelling and simulation of separation processes. Madhi holds profound knowledge in chemical and biochemical engineering technologies and sciences such as kinetics and reaction engineering, transport phenomena and especially separation processes. His work is particularly interested in process engineering that embraces various biochemical and chemical engineering subjects and utilizes experimental work, modelling, design and calculation procedures.	Dr Thanusha A.V. Current Fellow Dr Thanusha A.V. Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: Construction of 3D electro conductive nerve for the application of nerve damage (NervRgn) The complex collection of nerves and neurons that transmit signals between different parts of the body is mainly coordinated by the nervous system. Due to the fragile nature of nerves, peripheral nerve regeneration is an important area of research, as damage can occur by various mechanisms. These include disease, stretching, traumatic injuries or pressure to the protective lining of the nerve. In the United States of America alone, more than 200,000 nerve repair procedures are performed each year. Typically, current nerve repair technologies rely on grafting which has the advantage of closely mimicking the nerve characteristic. However, they also come with a major limitation or drawback on graft size, geometry, and potential averse immune response. The National Institute of Health of the United States of America strongly recommends the need for a new approach and materials for nerve regeneration (Castro & Hutmacher, 2018). This has motivated alternative nerve repair strategies, with neural tissue engineering (NTE) an essential strategic technique. The overarching goal of the present proposal (NervRgn) is to develop 3D printable functional materials for nerve regeneration.
Dr Sousa Javannikkhah Current Fellow Dr Sousa Javannikkhah Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: Computational Design of Copolyelectrolyte-based Orally Administrable Antibody Systems(ANTIPOLY-CD) Antibodies are promising biopharmaceuticals for the treatment of cancer, autoimmune diseases, Alzheimer's disease and several others. The challenges for successful implementation of antibody-therapy are to increase the stability of orally administered antibodies against proteolysis to lengthen their relatively short half-life within the body, as well as protein re-engineering to improve targeting to specific receptors in vivo. Therefore, the use of a delivery carrier is a promising approach to protect the protein from enzymatic degradation to ensure its prolonged therapeutic activity in the body. One potentially useful class of protein carriers are block copolyelectrolytes – one natural polyelectrolyte plus one neutral hydrophilic polymer block – which self-assemble into stable micelles with a compact core of proteins and charged blocks surrounded by a dilute corona composed of the neutral blocks. The micelle serves as a simple, biocompatible nano-reactor, separating the protein from the outer medium. Modulation of the targeted micelle characteristics, such as pH-stability, protein loading, and encapsulation efficiency could be achieved by molecular engineering of the block co-polyelectrolyte. To achieve this goal, this project proposes development and implementation of integrated, multi-scale modelling techniques especially suited to screen different copolyelectrolyte carriers for specific proteins under experimentally relevant conditions. As a first proof of principle, we will design a drug delivery system for the protein Trastuzumab, which is used in the treatment of breast cancer. Once benchmarked and validated, a high throughput screening framework will be implemented to decipher the scientific and engineering design rules needed to develop specific protein–polyelectrolyte systems that would lead to highly stable, targeted protein delivery for antibody therapies urgently sought by the biopharmaceutical industry	Dr Ajinkya Pandit Current Fellow Dr Ajinkya Pandit Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: An Integrated Crystallisation, Isolation and Drying (CID) Process Development Paradigm for Continuous Manufacturing of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (CIDP) Recent years have seen a push towards continuous processing (CP) in the manufacturing of pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) due to the potential benefits over the conventional batch processing route in terms of improved process efficiency, product consistency and reduced economic footprint. Crystallisation, isolation and drying (CID) are key unit operations in the process chain for the manufacture of APIs. In terms of CP, the interdependence between the individual CID unit operations demands an integrated process development paradigm. Recent interest in CP has spurred research in the development of continuous CID technologies (integrated or otherwise), however, the state-of-the-art is lacking in terms of translation towards industrial practice. In the proposed work an integrated CID process development paradigm is envisaged for the continuous manufacturing of APIs. The integrated, continuous CID process would be implemented experimentally for commercially relevant API systems. A modeling framework for the integrated, continuous CID process would be developed based on a first principles approach. Key CID process kinetics’ parameters necessary for process design calculations of chosen API systems, would be estimated through a combination of modeling and experimentation. Key issues in CP of chosen API systems would be identified and suitable mitigation strategies developed and tested within the integrated, continuous CID process development paradigm. The rigorously validated modeling framework would be used for evolving guidelines for process control and scale up. Research activities would be carried out in close association with industry to ensure the research directly translatable to the industry.	Dr Rochak Mittal Current Fellow Dr Rochak Mittal Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: Hydrodynamic cavitation for the process intensification and extraction of bioactive components from macroalgae (iEBiC) In recent times, macroalgae (seaweed) has gained a lot of attention as the potential and sustainable source of various biomolecules. Macroalgae has several advantages such as high productivity, low farming cost, no requirement of land for cultivation etc. Seaweeds are a vegetarian source of lipids (fatty acids) such as Omega 3 fatty acids, proteins, minerals, and polysaccharides etc. Thus, it is a valuable bioresource for low[1]volume high-value compounds for cosmetic, agriculture, nutraceuticals industries. Thus, in this study (for the first time), a method, namely hydrodynamic cavitation, is proposed to be employed to achieve process intensification and enhanced extraction of biomolecules for the efficient utilization of the macroalgal biomass. Hydrodynamic cavitation is capable of disrupting the cell wall of plants by creating very high local temperatures and pressure. It also promotes the intrinsic rate of the chemical reaction by enhancing the rate of heat and mass transfer, in turn, rapid migration of biomolecules from cell-matrix to the solvent at very low energy inputs. In this study, standardization of process parameters for enhanced extraction of biomolecules (lipids), modelling of hydrodynamic cavitation, the effect of cavitation on hydrolysis of lipids, their fractionation and evaluation of nutraceuticals properties are proposed. The fatty acids obtained after hydrolysis of lipids are proposed to be fractionated employing membrane processing. Further, the fatty acid fractions obtained will be evaluated by FAME analysis. In-vitro analysis can be undertaken to evaluate nutraceutical properties of the extract and fractions as well. Effect of application of hydrodynamic cavitation will be evaluated on hydrolysis. The developed process is expected to be an efficient and economically feasible method to carry out the hydrolysis at ambient temperature and thus, can be useful for the industries involved in the processing of algal biomass.	Dr Sowmiya Krishnaraj Current Fellow Dr Sowmiya Krishnaraj Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: Development of pharmaceutical aerosol trajectories and their deposition in the lungs using Ansys FLUENT – A numerical study (TargDrg) Recently, the cure for respiratory diseases is gaining more attention and in this regard, pharmaceutical aerosol is considered as one of the potential techniques for efficient treatment. However, the amount of drug required and its efficient deposition at the targeted site depends on the particle size and the human inhalation pattern. In most cases, it is highly complicated to achieve expected efficiency due to loss of unwanted loss of aerosol to healthy tissues and related side effects. Optimization of the above through clinical trials is impossible due to ethical and other related issues. However, CFD can offer an alternative platform for evaluating the behavior of aerosols during the treatment by predicting the fluid flow characteristics, different particle size trajectories while varying the input flow variable and its deposition over the tissues. Adequate numerical meshes will be generated in different airway sections that enable to precisely define the trajectories and local deposition patterns of inhaled particles. In addition, the idea of controlled air-particle stream which provides maximum, patient-specific drug-aerosol deposition based on optimal particle parameters such as diameter, density and particle-release position will be modelled by coupling dense discrete phase model (DDPM) with discrete element method (DEM) along with the inclusion of turbulence. The overarching Impact of this project is to advance our fundamental understanding of a central process in aerosol drug delivery with the aid of numerical simulations. The outcome of this proposal will improve the control over aerosol drug delivery, which will result in a more cost efficient and reliable pharmaceutical that will contribute to improved personalized medical treatments.
Dr Ryan Arevalo Current Fellow Dr Ryan Arevalo Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: MePOX: Designing Nano-Porous Material based Methane Partial Oxidation catalysts Ryan is developing multiscale modelling and high-throughput approaches to design novel nanoporous materials for methane activation and drug delivery systems.	Dr David Madden Current Fellow Dr David Madden Current Fellow PROJECT TITLE & ACRONYM: Automated Processes for Scalable Metal-Organic Framework Nanoparticle Synthesis (AutoMOF) Although recent advances in nanotechnology have provided an excellent platform to revolutionize the domain of health, the efficient and targeted delivery of many drug products in the body still remains an important challenge due to important drawbacks either from the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) (bioavailability, toxicity, etc.) and/or from the nanocarrier (biocompatibility, drug loading, reproducibility, insufficient targeting). Consequently, there is currently a real demand for drug substance nanocarriers able to solve these matters for the different administration routes. *AutoMOF* aims to develop automated and sustainable synthesis pathways for versatile highly porous biocompatible Metal-Organic Frameworks (MOF) nanoparticles for therapeutic applications. MOFs are associated with exceptional drug payloads and controlled releases providing both a specific control of reactions inside living entities (i.e. heating-triggered drug release) and additional properties such as imaging (magnetic resonance, thermal or optoacoustic imaging). This project will aim to utilise continuous synthesis pathways (Flow chemistry and twin screw extrusion) to synthesise biocompatible MOFs nanoparticles for advanced therapeutic applications. This project will utilise process analytical technologies (PAT), data analytics, and machine learning to automate the optimisation process to ensure the continuous production of high quality MOF nanoparticles which maintain important characteristics such as particle size, material structure, and porosity. Synthesised MOF nanoparticles will subsequently be examined for performance in advanced medical therapeutics such as treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and antibiotic resistance therapies. It is envisaged that this project will lead to significant opportunities in terms of new materials and processes for use in advanced medical therapeutics.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 801165.

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