The Institute of Pharmaceutical Innovation

Thursday 11th September, 2008 IPI to co-organise RCUK Summer School in Shanghai Oct 2008

IPI staff, Dr Qun Shao & Prof. Jamshed Anwar, in collaboration with Dr Jiwan Zheng of the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica Chinese Academy of Science, are organizing a prestigious RCUK SUMMER SCHOOL on
ADVANCED TECHNIQUES FOR DRUG DELIVERY RESEARCH: MOLECULAR-LEVEL CHARACTERISATION AND IN-SILICO METHODS to be held in Shanghai in Oct 2008.

The summer school will bring together young researchers from both the UK and PR China and introduce them to advanced techniques and methods in drug delivery research, and serve to enhance collaboration between the two nations. The school is 6-days long and will involve lectures and workshops as well as plenaries by world leading pharmaceutical scientists.

The emphasis of the school, in particular, is on techniques and methods that provide a molecular-level underpinning of the science relevant to drug delivery with applications to nanotechnology-based drug delivery systems. Experimental techniques to be covered include high-resolution imaging (atomic force and scanning tunneling microscopy), spectroscopic methods including solid state NMR and X-ray and neutron diffraction, and thermal methods. The in-silico modeling component of the summer school will focus on two cutting-edge computational technologies namely molecular simulation and artificial intelligence, which are attracting increasing interest both in fundamental research and from the pharmaceutical industry. A greater uptake of these techniques and methods promises to enhance our fundamental knowledge of the underlying molecular processes, hence will enable the development of drug delivery systems to be more rationally-based, involving fewer and better-informed experiments. Computer modeling can also enable the prediction of properties such as solubilities, partition coefficients, which will aid the selection of an appropriate molecule from the numerous candidate drugs, and help to accelerate the development of more efficacious and safer medicines.