Pharmacy PhD student wins conference presentation prize
October 2011
Hiba Al-Hamidi (final year PhD candidate) was the recipient of a prize for one of the 3 selected best oral presentations at the 5th Iranian Controlled Release Conference, 4-6 October, Mashhad.
Hiba was given a trophy and a small sum of money in recognition of her award. The title of her presentation was “Dissolution enhancement of Carbamazepine by amino sugars”.
Hiba summarises her presentation below.
'The pharmaceutical industry is facing a major challenge that is more than 40 % of newly discovered drugs have little or no water solubility and more the 90 % of drugs approved since 1995 have poor solubility, poor permeability, or both. The work presented explores D-glucosamine HCl (G-HCl) as a potential hydrophilic carrier to improve dissolution rate of a poorly water soluble drug, carbamazepine (CBZ) by use of solid dispersion and co-grinding approaches. The effect of different solvents in the preparation of solid dispersion formulations and the effect of different grinding time were all investigated. It has been shown that the use of G-HCl in solid dispersion and co-ground formulations can significantly enhance the dissolution rate of poorly water soluble drugs such as carbamazepine. This amino sugar could be used as a new carrier in solid dispersion and co-ground formulations and would have significant commercial potential.'
Hiba's PhD project is supervised by Dr Ali Nokhodchi (pictured) and Dr Alison Edwards from Medway School of Pharmacy.
