Current Nanomedicine

Ala-Eddin Al Moustafa has earned his B.Sc. from Aleppo University and his Master as well as PhD in Developmental Biology from the Institute of Embryology of the CNRS and Collège de France, and Paris XIII University. He completed his training as a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University. Dr. Al Moustafa established the first Cancer Research Centre in Aleppo-Syria and founded the Middle-Eastern Association for Cancer Research. He published more than eighty papers, in international journals, and book chapters. His main research focuses on the roles of several Oncogenes, gene cooperation and Onco-viruses, especially high-risk HPV and EBV in human carcinogenesis and metastasis. Dr. Al Moustafa joined the College of Medicine of Qatar University, as a Professor/Principal Investigator, where he established his cancer biology lab.

Maria J. Blanco-Prieto received her Pharmacy Degree from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain), followed by a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Paris-Sud (France). She completed a post-doctoral training at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, (Switzerland) and then joined the University of Navarra where presently she is Full Professor of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Technology. She is the author or co-author of more than 110 research papers and book chapters, 2 editorials, 5 patents and over 150 communications at scientific conferences. She has been responsible of more than 25 competitive research projects. Her research in drug delivery has won her numerous awards. She is member of several international advisory boards and societies, editorial board member of several journals such as International Journal of Pharmaceutics, Cancer Letters, Journal of Biomedical Nanotechnology.

Maria Luisa Bondì is a researcher of Pharmaceutical Technology at the Istituto per lo Studio dei Materiali Nanostrutturati- Italian National Council Research of Palermo. She is member of the Associate Professor Researchers and Pharmaceutical Technologists (Adritelf). She has 20 years of experience in the research and development of innovative formulations for the controlled release and targeting of drugs and genic material through lipid and polymeric nanoparticles for several application (e.g. medicine, food, ec.). In particular Dr. Bondì actively works in the field of brain, liver and ocular drug delivery. She has authred about 60 papers , 2 patents and edited a book and several book chapters on nanomaterials for application in therapy.

Dr. Costas Demetzos is Professor of pharmaceutical nanotechnology in the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He also serves as Director of the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Technology, as President of the Hellenic Pharmaceutical Society and is an elected Member of EUFEPS’ ExCo. His research interest is on harmaceutical nanotechnology, physical pharmacy and regulatory issues. He has published more than 200 research papers, one monograph, co-authored one book and edited three books. He has been awarded in pharmaceutical congresses and has led to awards of international and national patents. His research work has more than 3.000 cross references (h index 29).

Robert A. Freitas Jr. is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing (IMM) in California, after serving as a Research Scientist at Zyvex Corp. in Texas during 2000-2004. He is the author of Nanomedicine (Landes Bioscience, (Vol. I) 1999, (Vol. IIA) 2003), the first technical book series on medical nanorobotics, and 2 other technical books, 54 peer-reviewed papers or book chapters, and 9 issued U.S. patents. He was awarded the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology in 2009.

Kai Liu gained PhD degree in bioengineering and biomaterials at the University of Groningen in Netherlands. Then, he pursued postdoctoral research at the University of Groningen in Netherlands and Harvard University in US. Now, he has been working as a principle investigator and a full professor at Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry of Chinese Academy of Sciences and heading a laboratory with research on functional biomaterials. He has published more than 50 papers and several book chapters on DNA, protein and hybrid biomaterials for application in bioelectronics and biomedicine.

Gang Liu received his MD degree from North Sichuan Medical College (China) in 2002 and PhD degree from Sichuan University (China) in 2009. Subsequently, He focused his training on nanomedicine and molecularimaging at the National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, National Institutes of Health. In 2012, he joined the Center for Molecular Imaging and Translational Medicine, Xiamen University. Currently he is a Full Professor of Biomedical and Bioengineering and his research interests include biomaterials, theranostics, and molecular imaging.

Mechanical Engineering at the Chang Gung University of Taiwan. He received the Bachelor degree from Mechanical Engineering of National Taiwan University in 1986, and earned his Master and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1989 and 1992 respectively. Dr. Liu had been working as a Post-doctoral research fellow at McMaster University of Canada, and also been as a visiting professor to the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan and Aachen University of Applied Science in Germany. Dr. Liu has been involved in pioneering work on the concepts of various polymer processing techniques. His research work deals with theoretical and experimental processing of various polymeric materials including biodegradable polymers. the processing of bioabsorbable materials for drug delivery, implants and tissue engineering. Dr. Liu received the Morand Lambla Award from the International Polymer Processing Society in 2008. He is the author of more than 300 scientific publications including 170 referred journal papers, editor and co-editor of 6 books and the author of 15 patents.

Dr. Heidi M. Mansour is a faculty member in the College of Pharmacy, College of Medicine, and the BIO5 Research Institute at The University of Arizona (UA) in Tucson, Arizona (USA) with faculty member affiliations in the UA Institute of the Environment, and the UA NCI Comprehensive Cancer Center. Her research program has enjoyed funding from federal sources and the pharmaceutical industry. In addition to lecturing in the Graduate Ph.D. and Pharm.D. programs, Dr. Mansour leads her research lab where she trains postdoctoral scholars, visiting scholars, visiting professors, graduate students, Pharm.D. student researchers, and physician-scientist (MD/PhD) fellows.

Dr. Emanuele Papini graduated in Biology in 1983, and was post-graduate fellow at the University of Verona (Italy) between 1983 and 1985 working with Prof. P. Bellavite and Prof. F. Rossi on NADPH-oxidase activation mechanism. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1990 at the University of Padova in the laboratory of Prof. C. Montecucco, working on the intoxication mechanism of diphtheria toxin in collaboration with Dr. R. Rappuoli. In 1991 he became researcher at the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Padova. 1993-1994: Fellow scientist, Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology, UCL, UK, working on intracellular trafficking of bacterial toxins with Prof. D. Cutler and Prof. C. Hopkins. In 1998 he became Professor of General Pathology, University of Bari. In 2001 he became PI, Department of Biomedical Science, University of Padova. His teaching activities: General Pathology, Immunology, Immunological Biotechnology, Nanobiotechnology. His main research projects are in the field of bacterial toxins and adhesins action mechanisms, nanoparticles and peptides in medicine and pathology. He is author in about 92 scientific publications and inventor in two patents.

Dr. Phillips received his medical degree from the University of Texas Medical Branch as Galveston. He is a Professor of Radiology at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. He has been investigating nanoparticle drug delivery and the in vivo non-invasive imaging of the biodistribution of a wide variety of nanoparticles for more than 25 years. During this time he has published 110 peer-review manuscripts, 25 book chapters, received 6 patents, and co-authored the first book on the in vivo imaging of nanoparticles entitled “Nanoimaging”. His current research is focused on liposomal nanoparticles used as carriers for beta-emitting radiation to treat cancer. He is currently part of a clinical trial using these radiation emitting nanoparticles for glioblastoma therapy.

Dr Sahoo obtained a doctorate (Ph.D.) in chemistry from the University of Delhi, Delhi, India. Presently, Dr Sahoo is a scientist at the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar, India. He has nearly 20 years of experience in the research related to nanotechnology based drug delivery to cancer. Dr Sahoo has authored more than 80 manuscripts, 5 patents and edited one book “Nanotechnology in Health Care”

Vladimir P. Torchilin, Ph.D., D.Sc. is a University Distinguished Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Director, Center for Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and Nanomedicine, Northeastern University, Boston. His interests include drug delivery and targeting, nanomedicine, multifunctional and stimuli-sensitive pharmaceutical nanocarriers, biomedical polymers, experimental cancer therapy. He has published more than 400 original papers, more than 150 reviews and book chapters, wrote and edited 12 books, and holds more than 40 patents. Google Scholar shows more than 44,000 citations of his papers with H-index of 96. He is Editor-in-Chief of Current Drug Discovery Technologies, Drug Delivery, and OpenNano, Co-Editor of Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology and on the Editorial Boards of many other journals. He received more than $30 M from the governmental and industrial sources in research funding. He has multiple honors and awards and in 2011, Times Higher Education ranked him number 2 among top world scientists in pharmacology for the period of 2000-2010.

Dr. Thao T.D. Tran received his PhD degree in Pharmacy at Kangwon National University, South Korea. His research interests are design and engineering of drug delivery systems for enhancing drug bioavailability, including fabrication and functionalization of nanoparticles for improving therapeutics efficacy, particularly in cancer therapeutics and diagnostics. He is currently serving as an editorial board member and a scientific reviewer for several journals.

Dr. Wu is currently an Assistant Professor in Department of Gynecologic Oncology and Reproductive Medicine at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. Dr. Wu obtained her PhD degree at the University of Queensland. She has expertise in target discovery, in vitro and in vivo cancer models, nanotechnology, and molecular biology techniques for studying mechanisms of action and resistance. Her research focuses on: 1) Developing strategies to overcome immune suppression in cancer; 2) Developing novel strategies to enhance patient survival in ovarian cancer; 3) Developing novel nanoparticle platforms for tumor-targeted delivery; and 4) Early detection of ovarian cancer.

Dr. Xinghua Xia received the BS (1986) and MS degree (1989) in chemistry from Xiamen University, China. He received the Ph.D. degree in electrocatalysis in 1996 from the University of Bonn, Germany. During the following five years, he worked at the Universität der Bundeswehr, München, at the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max-Planck-Society in Berlin, Germany and the Debye Institute of the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands, performing postdoctoral studies on surface electrochemistry, electrochemical nanostructuring, and semiconductor electrochemistry. Since 2001, he became a Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Nanjing University, China. The current research activities of his group are focused on the understanding of interfacial of biomolecules and cells on substrates, micro/nanofluidics, nanobiosensors, plasmonic biosensors.

Dr. Hamed Barabadi has been a PhD scholar in the Department of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, since 2016. He graduated as a Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) from Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran, in 2014. Prior to starting his PhD, he served as a pharmaceutical expert at the Food and Drug Administration at the Department of Inspection and Supervision in Golestan Province, Iran, for two years.

Dr. Keyur D. Bhatt obtained his Ph.D. degree (2013) from Department of Chemistry, Gujarat University, India. Since June 2017, Dr. Bhatt is Head of the Department of Chemistry at Mehsana Urban Institute of Science, Ganpat University, India. His areas of interest and specialization involve the Design, Synthesis, Characterization of Supramolecule, Fluorescence sensors and Nanoaprarticles. Also, to study their Ion-binding properties with biological and environmentally important, metal ion, Amino acids, DNA, etc. Furthermore, Synthesis and characterization of organic molecules, Applications in the field of Metal complexes, Sensor and Nanomaterials, etc. Dr. Bhatt has 2 Indian patents, 30 Research articles and 9 books in International Journals to his credit.

Dr. Swati Gupta is an author and Professor of Pharmaceutics at Amity Institute of Pharmacy,Amity University, Noida, India. Dr. Gupta has nearly seventeen years of research/teaching experience. She has supervised 17 M.Pharm and 2 Ph.D. students. Dr. Gupta has over fifty publications to her credit published in international journals of high scientific impact and has contributed several chapters in many outstanding reference books. Dr. Gupta has presented several research papers in international/national conferences and also serves as the reviewer of several international journals.Her research interests include drug delivery using nanocarriers, drug targeting, molecular pharmaceutics, and nanotoxicity.

Dr. Md. Torequl Islam obtained PhD in Biotechnology in Natural Products. He is presently serving as faculty Member, Pharmaceutical Sciences at Novel Global Community Educational Foundation, Australia and Lecturer at Department of Pharmacy in BSMRSTU, Gopalganj, Bangladesh. He has been recognized with honors and awards such as World Championship 2018 in Biotechnology, Federal University Postgraduate Research Scholarship, Brazilian Journal of Biodiversity and Biotechnology 2016, Brazil and Isaac Newton Research Award 2016 in Genetics & Lifetime Membership at Photon Foundations.

Dr. Pradeep K. Jha is a Scientist at Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, prior to that he has been working as a Senior Research Scientist at the School of Medical Science and Technology; and Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Park at IIT Kharagpur, India for a decade. He is a founder director of Institute of Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Kharagpur, and serving as a consultant and co-Investigator of several biotech startups for small business incubation. He has developed innovative quality tools and techniques for pharmaceutical quality management. He is a member of professional societies like ISSRF, SAI, WABT France, and EUROMA; and referee of several journals.

Currently, I am working at USFDA/CDER/OGD as an ORISE fellow on different projects including immediate and controlled release dosage forms. I completed my Ph.D. in Pharmaceutics at University of Connecticut in May 2018 and since then have been working with USFDA. My research focus is on formulation design and evaluation of oral dosage forms (crystalline and amorphous nanoparticles) for BCS class II and II/IV drugs in order to improve their oral bioavailability, development of liposomal drug products and spray/freeze dried drug products. I have 7 research awards, 11 research publications, 2 book chapters, 26 poster presentations and 3 oral presentations. I have industry experience of ~2.5 years in formulation development.

Dr. Ayca Bal Ozturk received her bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from Istanbul University, Turkey. In her PhD thesis work she centered on developing the targeted polymeric nanoparticles for the cancer therapy. In 2016, she joined the lab of Prof. Ali Khademhosseini at Harvard Medical School, Harvard-MIT’s Division of Health Sciences and Technology as postdoctoral scientist for one year and then joined Faculty of Pharmacy as assistant professor of Analytical Chemistry Department in Istinye University. Her research interests include mainly nanostructured smart biomaterials, design and synthesis of innovative micro/nanoscale biomaterials as well as regulating stem-cell differentiation with the conclusive purpose of generating tissue-engineered organs, designing the next generation nanoparticles for efficient targeted drug delivery.

Dr. Sanjay B. Patil obtained his Ph. D. degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara, Gujarat, India in 2010. Presently he is working as Associate Professor at SNJB’s Shriman Sureshdada Jain College of Pharmacy, Chandwad, Nashik, India. His area of research comprises novel drug delivery systems including in situ gelling system, microparticles, and gastroretentive drug delivery systems. He has published and presented several papers in national and international journals and conferences. He is an editorial board member and reviewer for various journals.

Dr. Fabíola Praça is a Ph.D. Associate researcher at School of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Ribeirao Preto, University of São Paulo USP, Brazil, with master´s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences (2004) and Doctorate Degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences by the University of São Paulo – FCFRP-USP (2010) and postdoctoral fellow at the Research Institute for Medicines and Pharmaceutical Sciences Nanomedicine and Drug Delivery Systems (IMED) at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the University of Lisbon, Portugal (2011). Dr. Praça has experience with pharmaceutical technology, particularly to the development, characterization, and efficacy of nanocarriers with different physicochemical properties used for topical or transdermal drug delivery systems.

Degree in Pharmacy from the Methodist University of Piracicaba - Unimep (2005). Master and PhD from the School of Chemical Engineering, State University of Campinas - Unicamp (2005 and 2012). In the master made sandwich program at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul - UFRGS (2007-2008), and held a doctorate sandwich program at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University Fernando Pessoa - UFP in Porto, Portugal (2010-2011 ). She is currently professor Program in Industrial Biotechnology and pharmacy institute at University Tiradentes and researcher at the Institute of Technology and Research.

Dr. Ankur Vaidya did his PhD from Deptt. of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Dr. H. S. Gour University, Sagar (M.P.) India in year 2013. Dr. Vaidya has a teaching and research experience of more than 8 years and is currently working as Asst. Professor in Pharmacy College UPUMS, Saifai, Etawah (U.P.) India. Dr. Ankur has a key research interest in NDDS and colon specific drug delivery systems and published around 25 outstanding publications in various International journals with h-index of 10 and i-10 index of 10. Dr Vaidya has credited as reviewer of various international journals and published 4 international book chapters and 1 national book. Dr. Ankur has guided 16 postgraduate.

Dr. Ali Zarrabi is an Associate Professor at the Departments of Biotechnology of the University of Isfahan. His current research interests include Nano biotechnology, Nano medicine, Drug Delivery Systems, Nanotheranostics, Nanomaterial, SPIONs and Surface Modifications. Dr. Zarrabi has been a member of American Chemical Society (ACS), British Society for Nano medicine, European Society for Nano medicine, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and Nanotechnology Strategic Committee of University of Isfahan. He received his B.S. of Chemical Engineering from Isfahan University of Technology, Iran, in 2004, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, in Chemical Engineering (2007) and Nano biotechnology (2011), respectively.