Division of PharmaceuticsWhat's New ?
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2012 February: Geoff Lee has given a presentation of spray freeze drying at one of Germany's largest companies. You can brouse through the presentation here. 2011 December: the following abstracts have been accepted for the 8th World Meeting on Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics & Pharmaceutical Technology being held in Istanbul in March next year: Elke Lorenzen & Geoffrey Lee 'Slow
motion picture of protein inactivatrion during spray drying:
inactivation kinetics of L-glutamic
hydrogenase dried in an ultrasonic levitator'. We're hoping that a couple of the abstracts will be accepted as podium presentations. Let`s wait and see ! August: Simone Reismann completed her PhD exam on August 2nd. Congratulations ! FMP Technology, Erlangen, demonstrated their droplet generator at the division on August 4th. This nozzle generates a string of droplets via Rayleigh breakup. We are contemplating using this device to produce spray-dried large protein particles (project from Joachim Schäfer). July: Silke von Graberg just finished her PhD examination: 'Freeze drying in small containers: vial heat transfer coefficients'. Well done ! June: We have submitted the following abstracts to the upcoming Meeting of the Deutsche Pharmazeutische Gesellschaft in Innsbruck, Austria this year: 1) Elke Lorenzen & Geoffrey Lee
'Influence of different drying air
humidities on the residual activity of single droplets of L-glutamic
hydrogenase dried in an ultrasonic levitator'. May: At long last our new professor for clinical pharmacy is here ! Prof Kristina Leuner has joined us from Frankurt and we be resposnsible for teaching and research in this subject ! March: Congratulations to Georg Straller who successfully defended his PhD 'Regulating particle morphology during a spray freeze drying process and detecting protein structure using online light scattering'. February: On 17th Febraury Elke Lorenzen, Sabine Ullrich and I will again participate in a 'Tag der Naturwissenschaft & Technik' at a local grammar school - Gymnasium Fridericianum Erlangen. The talk will be about Pharmacy as a career, and also presents the art & science of pharmacy with demonstrations of making pills, granulation, and droplet/particle levitation. You can see the presentation here.
2010 December: Henning Gieseler's application for his habilitation has been passed by the Faculty of Natural Sciences. This is an important, big qualification in Germany, so congratulations on an excellent job done ! The title of his work is: 'Quality by design (QbD) in freeze-drying by using innovative process analytical technologies'. Henning studied phamacy in Würzburg before coming to Erlangen for his PhD. The first 18 months of his post-doc he spent with Prof Mike Pikal at UConn, and came back to Erlangen 1n 1996. He will be staying on in the Division until the beginning of 2013 -- there's still a lot to be done on freeze-drying !! June: Congratulations to Anke Sass who has just successfully defended her PhD entitled 'Spray drying of proteins from solvent-water mixtures'. May: Geoff Lee has been appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of the Institute of Medical Engineering in Oxford. The Institute has recently been awarded a very large grant by the Welcome Foundation/EPSRC to examine 'Personalised Healthcare', and one of the projects concerns drug delivery. April: Sebastian Vonhoff has finished his PhD with an excellent examination. His thesis is called: 'Influence of atomization conditions on protein secondary and tertiary structure during microparticle formation by spray freeze drying'. This was the second time we have been through the faculty's new type of doctoral examination -- it's an improvement over the old type of exam since a proper 'defence' of the research project now is offered. Our newest post-grad , Ulrike Pohl, also started this month. Good luck ! The search committee for our new W2 Professorship in molecular and clinical pharmacy has just approved advertising the position. This will be an important post for pharmacy in Erlangen, so let's hope that we receive lots of good applications for the job ! January: Geoff Lee will be giving an invited presentation at the 'ECA Spray Drying Conference' to be held in Copenhagen 20-22 April 2010. The talk is entitled: 'Spray drying on laboratory scale'. 2009 December: Stefan Schneid completed his PhD exam successfully with the thesis entitled: 'Investigation of process analytical technology (PAT) tools for use in freeze-drying equipment'. And there is some further good news from the research area: Geoff Lee has just been awarded 95,000€ from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG = German Research Foundation) for a project looking at interactions of drugs in thin polymer films and skin lipid matrices used to prepare transdermal systems. This work involves problems such as the determination of saturation solubilities in rubbery polymers and the influence of the degree of saturation on diffusional processes -- all good stuff. November:
we are submitting the following abtracts to the upcoming World Meeting on
Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology to be held in
Malta next year: September: Harald Pudritz has finished his PhD and passed the exam with his thesis on 'Influence of formulation variables on the in vitro deposition of spray-dried respirable particles'.
July: The faculty's new 'InfoDay' was pretty successful and we had a fair bit of interest for our pharmacy degree programme. Britta Schröder finished her excellent PhD this month on a new electrochemical transdermal system. Also, Harald Pudritz has left us after completing the writing of his thesis. He'll take his PhD exam in the autumn. And, not forgetting our new group picture:
April: George Straller, one of our PhD students, has just passed his examination as 'Fachapotheker für Pharmazeutische Technologie'. It's not an easy exam, so well done Georg ! March: On 18th March Simone Reismann, Elke Lorenzen and I will participate in the 'Tag der Technik' at one of the local grammar schools (Gymnasium Fridericianum Erlangen). He will talk about Pharmacy as a career, and also discuss the M.Sc. Pharmacy Programme at Erlangen University. There will be 2 demonstrations: Simone will present the old art of making pills, and Elke will show the new concepts of droplet/particle levitation. Hence the title of the presentation: 'Defeating Newton, and Other Things'. Eva Wulsten has just finished writing-up her Ph. D. thesis with the title 'Determination of droplet surface temperature and drying kinetics of protein solutions using a ultrasonic levitator'. And, Eva Meister has passed her PhD exmination this month, with an excellent piece of research on the 'Methodology, data interpretation and practical transfer of freeze-dry miocroscopy' supervised by Dr Henning Gieseler. Henning has also organised the 5th Erlangen Freeze Drying Seminar this month (fully booked). January: We have three new PhD projects for which we require post-grad students ! The research themes concern freeze-drying of biologicals, investigation of glass properties of mixed amorphous/crystalline systems, and polymer research for new transdermal systems. You might have seen the advertisement in the 'Pharmazeutische Zeitung', so if you are interested please send in your appplication asap (well known to native speakers: 'as soon as possible').
2008 October: This month our PhD student Harald Pudritz successfully passed his examination as 'Fachapotheker für Pharmazeutische Technologie'. Congratulations ! Other news: the department again had a stand at the Technopharm exhibition in Nürnberg. It was perhaps a little disappointing that the exhibition's visitors were not really orientated to pharmaceutics. Most likely, we will give the next exhibition in 2010 a miss. The next Erlangen freeze drying seminar will take place in March/April 2009. Book quickly to ensure you receive a place !! The Swiss company Büchi chose Erlangen to host its spray drying seminar on October 15th. It was fully booked and a great success. May: Prof Lee has been invited to give a talk on 'Spray Drying in Lab Scale' at the International 'Spray Drying' Seminar organised by Concept Heidelberg. This seminar will be held December 3 -4 at Niro in Copenhagen: http://www.concept-heidelberg.de/ April: The recent Erlangen Freeze Drying Seminar was, once again, fully booked and a fine success. You can view the happy participants at this link: http://www.freeze-drying.eu/html/pictures.html . Congratulations to Henning Gieseler whose idea this is and who does all of the organisation. Prof Lee will be giving a presentation at the seminar 'Particle Design for APIs and Drug Products' to be held in Brussels on September 9-10. The talk's title is 'Development of the Supersonic Microparticle'. More details are available at: http://www.informa-ls.com/particle. April: And some more good news has just arrived in the post. The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved financing of a first extension to our project on single droplet drying levitation of protein solutions (DFG Le 626/8-2). A total of approximately 95,000 € will be provided over the next two years. This project is important to us, because it will enable a direct investigation of the kinetics of protein damage during drying both before and after the critical point of drying. Apart from its obvious relevance for optimising drying processes with sensitive biomolecules, this work with the levitator is simply new and original. March: there is some very fine news from England. Heiko Schiffter PhD has just been appointed as a Junior Research Fellow in Brasenose College, Oxford. This is a wonderful opportunity to be associated with such a well-known institution. February: Jürgen Bögelein hat just sucessfully completed his PhD examination. The title of his thesis -- available online -- is: 'Influence of amorphous adjuvents on the enzymatic activity of spray dried catalase and lysozyme'.
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2007 December: Prof Lee has been invited to give a presentation in the Department of Pharmacy at Munich University on Janury 24. The subject will be the drying behaviour of levitated microdroplets as a model for protein spray drying, as summarised in the title of the talk: ''Wingardium leviosa !' Or the art of levitation of microdroplets'. Of course, Harry Potter will be putting in an appearance. October: Peter Lassner successfully defended his thesis and past his PhD exam. His research title was: 'Spray drying an IgG fragment:creating a storage stable form'. We have submitted the following abstracts to the upcoming International Meeting on Pharmaceutics, Pharmaceutical Technology and Biopharmaceutics to be held in Barcelona next year: Georg Straller &
Geoffrey Lee: Determination of protein aggregation during spray-freeze-drying of
carbonic anhydrase with online light scattering. June: Andreas Ziegeler passed his continued learning examination as a 'Fachapotheker für Pharmazeutische Technolgie', on which we congratulate him ! Janssen Pharmazeutica will be sponsoring a new (post-)graduate student position in the Department. The project concerns the freeze drying of nanosuspensions. March: We were present at the Technopharm meeting in Nürnberg again this year. Although the first day was unusually quiet, things picked up on the last two days. It was a great pleasure to meet some old Heidelberg colleagues (GR, EB, JH) and chat about old times. Again, our thanks to the APV for making our presence possible. Prof. Lee has been invited to give a presentation 'Spray drying of peptide and proteins' at the forthcoming Johnson and Johnson Spray Drying Seminar in Beerse. The talk can be seen here.
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2006 December: the Christmas party ! November:
Henning Gieseler presented his research group and ideas to the Faculty in a
recent presentation. Our new light scattering detector has just arrived and been
installed by Wyatt onto one of our HPLCs. This powerful detection method will
enable us to examine in quantitaive detail how protein molecules are aggregated
or unfolded during technical processes such as spray, freezing and drying. July 2006: The German Research Foundation (DFG) will has just announced funding for our continuing project on examination of changes in protein structure induced by atomization and drying processes (DFG Le 626 7-2). The total sum of 130 000 Euros awarded will provide us with 2 new light-scattering detectors for static and dynamic measurements. When attached to an HPLC/SEC unit we can now determine aggregate molecular weight (static scattering) and also hydrodynamic diameters (dynamic scattering) of our proteins. This type of on-line detection will greatly advance our protein analysis capability. The news about the DFG funding was therefore excellent, and we are thrilled about this success ! June 2006: Henning Wegner successfully defended his PhD this month. The subject was an examination of the compaction properties of powders prepared by the concentrated powder form technique. This project was sponsored by Rapps Foundation. March 2006: it's been a couple of years since our last Postdoc, Wolfgang Friess, finished here and took up his post as associate Prof in Munich. At last we have a new Postdoc, Henning Gieseler, who started his work here in February. Henning took his PhD in Erlangen, before leaving for the US to work for 1 1/2 years with Mike Pikal at UConn. His new research group works on freeze drying of biologicals and, especially, on process analytical technology (acronym = PAT). His has already brought a freeze drying microscope with him, which will be followed this month by a new 'super freeze dryer' working an intelligent principles. You can check out his activities at: February 2006: ...and the next PhD thesis is already there ! Alex Mauerer's work on 'Secondary structural changes of spray dried proteins with Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy' is finished. January 2006: Heiko Schiffter has just finished his dissertation entitled: 'Single droplet drying of proteins and protein formulations using acoustic levitation' (download here: watch out ! 13 MB !). This is our first PhD using the levitator into examine the drying kinetics of droplets of a protein solution. Heiko will be starting a Post-doc in February at the Department of Medical Engineering at Oxford University. This will certainly be great experience, and we all wish him well.
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2005 October 2005: Geoffrey Lee has been invited to give a presentation 'Stabilization of Spray Dried Proteins using Adjuvents' at the IQPC conference 'Particle 2006' to be held in February 2006 in Berlin. Heiko Schiffter is presenting a poster of his work at the upcoming AAPS Annual Meeting in Nashville. The title is: Determination of Single Droplet Drying Kineticsof Protein Solutions via Acoustic Levitation. October 2005: Our new workshop engineer Josef Hubert will take up his post at the department on October 4th. We all wish him well in the new job at our department! Our stand at the TechnoPharm Exhibition in Nürnberg was very attractive this year. The T-shirts hanging on the washing line were a great favourite, as well as the wine bottles. We had two presentations at the accompanying Life Sciences Conference: Heiko Schiffter talked about droplet drying kinetics of proteins measued with the levitator, and Jürgen Bögelein presented some results about the effects of drying air temperature on the stabilizing influence of trehalose on spray dried catalase. You can download photos of the stand here. September 2005: Stefan Seyferth has been invited by Büchi for a presentation on "Spray drying vs. Freeze drying - methods and major differences" at the Büchi Seminar "Concentration, Drying and Chromatography". The talk will be held at the congress center in Basel on Wednesday, September 21st. September 2005: A recent photo of us all. August 2005: the German Research Foundation (DFG) has provided approximately 125,000 EURO to finance the single droplet drying levitator project. Most importantly, we can now purchase an infra-red camera to determine the surface temperature of a drying droplet of a protein solution. Additionally we can purchase a special microsyringe unit for making very fine droplets of diameter in the micrometer range. A new PhD studentship has also been financed, so all-in-all it was a successful proposal ! Juli 2005: This month we have had 3 finished PhD theses which are available here to download. Katya Lahm: 'Investigation on intradermal delivery of drug powder by needle-free injection'; Michael Maury: 'Aggregation and structural changes in spray dried immunoglobulins'; Christian Rochelle: 'Spray freeze dried protein powders for needle-free injection'.
May 2005: Our workshop engineer, Winifried Bauer, will be retiring at the
end of this month after some 15 years' service to the department. We wish him
all the best for his retirement and hope that he now has plenty of time to get
on with the gardening at home !! He successor, Herr Hubert, will be
starting in October.
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2004 October
2004: Geoffrey Lee has been invited by the Medical Engineering Unit (MEU)
at the University of Oxford to give a presententation of work on the use of
spray-freeze drying and spray drying to produce particles suitable for
needle-free delivery. The talk will be held at MEU (43, Banbury Road, Oxford) on
Wednesday November 3rd at 14:30. A pdf file of the presentation can be
downloaded here. July 2004: Milton Biotech will be financing a new PhD position and research project to examine the freeze-drying of biologicals. The research project will be starting this autumn. Doris Köpper has just defended her PhD thesis sucessfully. She worked on the development of special cream bases containing volatile oils, but made up exclusively of natural ingredients. Her thesis is available here for download. May 2004: Prof Lee will be giving an invited presentation at the seminar on 'Freeze-Drying of Pharmaceuticals & Biologicals' to be held in Breckenridge, CO, USA, in July this year. The presentation is entitled: 'Spray Drying of Pharmaceuticals' and will present a brief overview of protein spray drying as well as some result from our single droplet drying levitator. Henning Gieseler has just completed his PhD thesis 'Product morphology and drying behavior delineated by a new freeze-drying microbalance' (pdf download). He will be leaving this summer for the States to do a 2 years' post-doc with Prof. Mike Pikal. Starting July 1st Abbott will be supporting a research project on the spray drying of Fab fragments for use in sustained release, parenteral systems. A PhD position will be fully financed in the Department of Pharmaceutics.
February 2004: Our new 'akademischer rat', Dr. Stefan Seyferth, takes up his new post on February 2. Dr Seyferth graduated in pharmacy at Erlangen, before taking up his PhD studies in Pharmaceutics. His knowledge and experience will be a great boost to the Department ! We all wish him well in the new job ! His predecessor, Dr. Gerhard Simon, decided to leave Erlangen for personal reasons and take up a similar post in Munich. We also wish him well and a good start in the 'big' (in Bavarian terms) city. January 2004: Christian Führling has finished his PhD thesis entitled: 'Interactions between proteins, sugars and surfactants: dynamic studies on adsorption at interfaces'.
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2003
October 2003: We have submitted the following
abstracts for the upcoming International Meeting on
Pharmaceutics, Biopharmaceutics & Pharmaceutical Technology, to be held
in Nürnberg between 15th and 18th March 2004: September 2003: Henning Gieseler will be presenting a poster at the upcoming AAPS meeting in Salt Lake City. Title: Microbalance study of drying rate and morphology of spray freeze dried powders. Stefan Seyferth has finished his PhD project and will be taking his exam shortly. The title of his dissertation is: 'Precipitation and conformational changes of calcitonin induced by ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid.' July 2003: Prof. Lee has received 15,000 Euros from the DFG to support his projects examining changes in protein structure occuring during the various process steps of spray drying and spray freeze drying, viz atomisation, convective drying, rapid droplet freezing. March 2003: We have three posters at the
upcoming meeting of the CRS German Chapter in Munich. These concern
freeze
drying using a microbalance technique,
use of FT-IR
to examine protein secondary structural changes during spray drying and
inactivation studies of catalase during the process steps
of spray freeze drying. February 2003:
The European Patent Office has overturned the
European patent owned by Inhale about glassy stabilisation of
proteins (see below, June 2001). The judgement will be published presently.
We'll keep you informed !
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2002 November 2002: we are in the process of setting up a single droplet drying levitator to examine the drying of droplets of a protein solution. This device was conceived in the Department of Fluid Mechanics (Prof. Durst) in Erlangen. We are building our own maschine and intend to examine protein droplet drying both qualitatively and quantitively as a model for spray drying. More info is available here. September 2002: Prof Lee will be
giving an invited talk for the Hamburg chapter of the Deutsche
Pharmazeutische Gesellschaft on February 4, 2003. The title is:
''Herstellung stabiler protein-beladener Pulver zur
pulmonaren oder parenteralen Anwendung".
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2001
December 2001: Prof Lee will be giving an invited
talk on 'Spray Drying to Produce Fine Particles of Stable
Protein Formulations' at AAPS's upcoming Pharmaceutics & Drug Delivery
Conference to be held in Arlingtonm, VA, on April 22- 24, 2002.
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2000
December 2000: The following abstracts have been
accepted by the Annual Meeting of the Controlled Release Society German Chapter,
Saarbrücken, 2 February 2001:
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1999
March 1999: The Annual Meeting of the Controlled
Release Society, German Chapter, is being held in Erlangen on Friday March 19.
We have 13 podium presentations by graduate students as well as numerous posters.
We expect some 70 guests ! You can down load the pdf abstracts of the conference
here.
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