The Surface Properties of Pharmaceuticals

This industrially co-funded interdisciplinary project presents an exciting opportunity for an ambitious scientist or engineer to work across the boundaries of chemistry, physics and engineering, with opportunities to develop a broad portfolio of skills and a strong professional network in academia and industry. A combination of polarised Raman spectroscopy and small angle X-ray scattering techniques will be used to study the surfaces of crystalline drugs, to determine how surface properties influence their behaviour in medicines. This is a real challenge in medicines manufacturing, as there is currently no reliable scientific basis for understanding how, for example, chemical functional groups present on the surfaces, such as carboxylic acid and hydroxyl groups, influence the behaviour of crystalline particles in a formulated drug. With advances in computing facilities and in Raman instrumentation, we can now realistically hope to establish the details of surface functionalisation and intermolecular interactions with the surrounding chemical environment. The information gained in this project will enable improvements in process control and predictive modelling. The project will combine experimental work with researchers at Leeds and at the UK's national synchrotron radiation facility, Diamond, including some development of computational data analysis code. The project is co-sponsored by a multi-national pharmaceutical company, with a placement opportunity for the student to spend three months working with Research and Development teams at the company. This work will also be embedded in the £10 million EPSRC Future Continuous Manufacturing and Advanced Crystallisation Hub (CMAC), providing networking opportunities with multinational companies and leading academic research groups from 7 universities. In the first year, the student will be able to draw on extensive training and mentoring opportunities in crystallisation, crystallography and particle science research, apart from the project specific polarised Raman spectroscopy and small angle X-ray scattering.