Jennifer Dressman
Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology, Germany
Jennifer Dressman’s research interests focus principally on predicting the in vivo performance of drugs and dosage forms after oral administration. She is best known for pioneering the use of Biorelevant dissolution testing and her contributions to combining dissolution testing with physiologically based pharmacokinetic modelling in order to achieve quantitative predictions of oral drug absorption.
In recognition of her research excellence, she has been made a Fellow of the AAPS, the CRS, and the FIP. In 2008 she was awarded the Distinguished Scientist Award of the FIP and in 2017 was named the International Woman Pharmaceutical Scientist of the Year by the APSTJ. Her research papers have been awarded Paper of the Year on four occasions (Ebert Prize 1986, Phoenix Prize 2003, Best Paper Award EJBP 2010 and Most Informative research Paper Simcyp 2017) and she was named a “Highly Cited Researcher” in both 2016 and 2018.
Title of Lecture: Biopredictive in vitro Dissolution Methodologies
Summary of Lecture: This presentation will focus on problem areas in oral drug absorption that we would like to be able to predict / simulate. These include food effects – both positive and negative, changes in absorption due to co-administration with acid-reducing agents, and formulation effects on absorption. A common framework to address these challenges is to combine results from biorepredictive dissolution methods with physiologically based pharmacokinetic models. Worked examples of all three problem areas will be discussed.
Matthias G. Wacker
Department of Pharmacy, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Matthias G. Wacker is an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmacy, NUS. Initially, he studied Pharmacy at Goethe University (Germany) where he obtained his doctoral degree in pharmaceutical technology. As a principal investigator, he has joined Jennifer Dressman and Jörg Kreuter in the Institute of Pharmaceutical Technology, Goethe University. There he accomplished his habilitation exploring the rational design of nanocarriers. Before joining NUS, he was heading the Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Nanosciences of the Fraunhofer-IME. Currently, he serves the European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics and the Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society as an editorial board member. Further, he is a scientific advisor to the editors of the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences. In recognition of his research excellence, he was honored with the Eudragit® Best Paper Award (2014) and the Phoenix Pharmaceutics Science Award (2017). From 2020-2025, he is a member of the General Chapters – Dosage Forms Expert Committee and the Expert Panel on New Advancements in In-Vitro Product Performance Testing of the United States Pharmacopeial Convention.
Title of Lecture: Nanomedicine Revisited: A Facelift for Personalized Therapy?
Summary of Lecture: Recently, nanomedicine experienced an unforeseeable ‘renaissance’, leading to a broader acceptance in pharmaceutical formulation development. The next generation of nanomaterial-related drug products, the extracellular vesicles, are obtained from living cells in biotechnological production processes. They represent an intercellular messenger system and have been widely recognized as a personalized delivery strategy. However, after more than 30 years of clinical nanomedicine, the challenges associated with the translation from bench to bedside have become more apparent. With a focus on injectable nanomedicines, this keynote lecture will discuss the prospects of nanocarrier delivery in the development of new drug products. Where do we stand in the characterization of nanomedicines and are we ready for the next step of evolution? In specific, the latest progress in the area of in vitro-in vivo correlation (IVIVC) and the application of computational methods in formulation development will be highlighted.