Dermal Drug Delivery & Diagnostics Laboratory
Dr Keng Wooi Ng @ Newcastle University
I recently published a perspective article with Professor Syed Moein Moghimi in Precision Nanomedicine (the official journal of the European Foundation for Clinical Nanomedicine). In it, we offered our views and analysis on emerging techniques for sensing and analysing biomolecules in the skin, focusing on the capabilities and promises nanotechnology brings to the scene.
The article is open access.
Our paper on surface-functionalised nanoparticles and their ability to adhere to or penetrate mucous membranes has been accepted and published online. I congratulate my co-authors on this well-deserved outcome, and hereby present the paper to my readers:
The article is available for free from Elsevier until 29 August 2018. To access the free full text, please follow this link:
https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1XMgF3J1dIQyBp
In the paper, we demonstrated that nanoparticles whose surfaces were functionalised differently attained the ability to either adhere to or penetrate the mucus layer in the small intestines of the rat. We postulate that the same can be true in humans. This has important applications in oral drug delivery, where the nanoparticles can be tailored to target drug delivery to the gut differently, depending on the desired drug release profile.
The work was led by Professor Vitaliy Khutoryanskiy, of the University of Reading.
A paper I co-authored with the team led by Dr Brian Jones (University of Bath) has just been published in the journal Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology. This is an open-access publication and you can grab a copy by following this link.
The paper describes a burn wound model that enables high-throughput evaluation of wound control measures. It is based on ex vivo (i.e. freshly excised) porcine skin that is both anatomically relevant and biologically responsive, and therefore superior to most in vitro models currently available.
I am glad to have contributed to this paper, and am pleased to introduce it to my readers.
I have been working with the MDPI editorial office to guest edit the Penetration Enhancement of Topical Formulations special issue in the open-access journal, Pharmaceutics.
The collaboration has now concluded and I have written an editorial for that issue, which has now been published:
Ng, K.W. Penetration Enhancement of Topical Formulations. Pharmaceutics 2018, 10, 51
I thank the MDPI editorial office for the opportunity to be part of this effort. Special thanks go to MDPI editorial staffers, Felicia and Liane, who co-ordinated much of the work. It has been a most valuable experience for me, and I look forward to more future collaborations.