Pharmaceutical Physical and Analytical Chemistry

The Pharmaceutical Physical and Analytical Chemistry group applies physical chemical approaches in combination with advanced analytical techniques to advance understanding of fundamental processes in drug design, development and characterization. Common to the activities is a focus on the interplay between basic physical chemical properties of drug substances and excipients, kinetics and transport processes in relation to both delivery and analytical methods.
The group designs delivery systems for parenteral administration (subcutaneous or intra-articular injection), including solid lipid particles, cubosomes and hexosomes, liquid crystalline depots, as well as prodrugs and in situ formulation forming systems.

“The methods applied in formulation development are often very crude. We move beyond the well-stirred beaker to mimic the biological environment and integrate with high-information-content analytical techniques in our in vitro systems” says Group Leader, Jesper Østergaard.

Development of analytical chemical concepts and methods is a hallmark of the group. LC, CE and TDA with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), mass-spectrometry or fluorescence are used for developing quantitative methods. These methods are used for characterizing the cell uptake and distribution, leakage and release from drug carriers of, e.g., metallo-drugs.