Research

Thesis title: "Inhalation of natural products against lung infections – extraction, isolation and analysis of selected natural product sample sets and analytical evaluation of inhalable formulations"

Thesis outline: The doctoral project is embedded in the Austrian Science Fund FWF Stand-Alone project "Inhalation of natural products against lung infections" (project number P 35115) and deals with the search and evaluation of promising candidates active against acute respiratory infections (ARI). Principal investigators of this FWF project are Univ.-Prof. Dr. Lea Ann Dailey (LAD), deputy head of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Priv.Doz. Dr. Ulrike Grienke (UG) supported by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Judith M. Rollinger (JMR) from the Division of Pharmacognosy, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences.The project is divided into two parts, each carried out by one doctoral student: phytochemistry/drug discovery (supervised by UG and JMR) and formulation science/preclinical development (supervised by LAD).

The main areas of innovation are 

1) to establish a pharmacokinetics (PK) guided lead selection process which can be integrated in an innovative natural products discovery platform (FWF project P 34028) and 

2) the participation in the global development of an inhalation biopharmaceutical classification system (iBCS) framework.

Within the framework of the FWF P 35115 project and its sub-area phytochemistry/drug discovery, the intended doctoral project has the following aims:

Work package 1 (WP 1): Phytochemistry

• Large scale extraction of promising candidates and
• isolation and purification of anti-ARI active constituents

WP 1 will cover the establishment and optimisation of phytochemical preparation methods for the extraction, isolation and enrichment of mixtures/pure compounds to retrieve sufficient sample quantities for the characterization of solubility, dissolution and Calu-3 permeability of promising candidates e.g. from FWF project P 34028 including assessment of PK synergies.

Work package 2 (WP 2): Bio-Analytics

• Method development and quantitative UPLC-MS/MS analysis of constituents in

WP 2 aims to analyze and characterize samples which all will be provided throughout the formulation science/preclinical development part of the FWF project P 35115.

Funding: FWF project P 35115

Supervisor: Lea Ann Dailey, Advisors: Ulrike Grienke, Judith M. Rollinger

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