Research
My research goal is to understand and improve skin health by using tailor-made delivery systems for pharmaceutic and cosmetic actives. The major pillars of my work are to design and test carrier systems in vitro or in (pre)clinical settings and to analyse their impact on skin physiology.
Since the exact nature of a topical vehicle has a major impact on skin penetration of its compounds, formulation and penetration studies go together to identify suitable strategies for established or new actives such as small molecules, re-purposed drugs or plant-based actives.
For testing of new vehicles, we have established classic and modern platforms for permeation and penetration monitoring with special focus on vibrational spectroscopy: ATR-FTIR and confocal Raman spectroscopy for analysis of physiological skin compounds and penetrated chemicals. For in vitro testing, we cultivate human primary skin cells. During past years, special focus was placed on evaluating the effect of UV radiation and plant-based compounds on epidermal and dermal cells. Further projects deal with real life impact studies on pharmaceutical compounding that aim to optimize clinically relevant topical treatments in dermatology and ophthalmology regarding safety and efficacy of application.
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