Thesis Defense Announcement
To:  The George Mason University Community

Candidate: Rachel Pepin

Program: M.S. in Biology
 
Date:   Monday, April 3, 2017
Time:   10:30 am
Place:  Colgan Hall (Occoquan Bldg.), Room 328-H
             George Mason University
 Science & Technology Campus
 
 
Title: “Nanoaerosols for Potential Pulmonary Delivery of Critical Therapeutics”
Thesis Director: Dr. Monique van Hoek
Thesis Committee: Serguei Popov, Dr. Kylene Kehn-Hall, Dr. Patrick Gillevet 
 
All are invited to attend the defense.
 
Abstract: 
New approaches and therapies to deliver current drugs are always being sought to improve upon conventional techniques.  The method of producing drug nanoaerosol particles based on the Electrospray Neutralization technique is proposed as a new approach in the treatment of lung diseases by delivering drugs deep into lung tissue, increasing their bioavailability as a result of bypassing first-pass metabolism in the liver, and reducing the toxicity and effective dose over oral administration. The goal of this work is to test the applicability of the Electrospray Neutralization technique to generate nanoaerosols from different drug substances and to evaluate how solubility, ionic state, and other physical and chemical properties of drugs affect nanoaerosol generation. Size and mass spectra of generated nanoaerosol particles were taken for fourteen drugs and potential inhaled doses were estimated for humans and mice. It was found that the generator produced nanoaerosol particles with an average geometric size of 30-40 nm for most drugs electrosprayed from 0.1 % solutions in water.  Multiple Path Particle Dosimetry modeling of the total and regional lung deposition predicts that humans will get doses of approximately 1 μg/kg/hour and mice will receive approximately 30 µg/kg/hour.

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