Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Extending the applicability of gas chromatography in pharmaceutical analysis." "Erwin Adams" "Pharmaceutical Analysis" "Gas chromatography (GC) is a well-established separation technique based on the selective interaction of the analytes in the gas phase (and moving by the mobile phase) with the stationary phase. As analytes should be easily volatilised, its use is somehow limited, often requiring long pre-treatments. In this work, the use of less conventional headspace (HS) modes such as multiple headspace (MHE), total volatilization (TVT) and full evaporation (FET) are explored to overcome current challenges in pharmaceutical analysis. Moreover, an experimental design was used for the optimization of pre-treatments, extending the applicability of this technique.First, an MHE-GC method for the characterisation of sorption capacities of solids has been developed, from its theoretical background to its application to the classification of different mesoporous silica materials used for drug delivery. Then, the overestimation risk in the analysis of methylsiloxanes was overcome by the development of a TVT-GC method, that can be combined with a single step liquid extraction to be applied to different complex matrices. Similarly, the sample consumption was diminished by optimisation of the pre-treating derivatisation reactions, enabling quality control of mixed triglycerides used for clinical diagnosis. Finally, the use of FET-GC for water determination in pharmaceutical products has been discussed as sample-saving alternative to conventional methods, without the risk of atmospheric moisture contamination." "Development of LC-MS methods for the analysis of pharmaceuticals in waste water." "Adrian Covaci" "Toxicological Centre" "The proposal aims at validating analytical methods based on liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry for the determination of various classes of priority pharmaceuticals in waste water. A first ever screening of these pharmaceuticals in waste water from Flanders will be done. Next, the identification of pharmaceuticals other than the target compounds and the evaluation of the stability of priority pharmaceuticals in waste water will also be investigated." "Pharmaceuticals in the aquatic environment: chemical trace analysis, environmental behaviour and ecological effects" "Kristof Demeestere" "Department of Sustainable Organic Chemistry and Technology" "Pharmaceuticals are internationally considered as emerging environmental micorpollutants. This project aims at gaining innovative insights into the environmental partitioning and ecotoxicological effects of the studied pharmaceuticals. Therefore, innovative chemical analytical methods will be developed, optimized and validated to measure trace concentration levels of selected pharmaceuticals in aqueous and solid environmental matrices." "Microtiterplate reader for high-throughput applications in pharmaceutical and bio-analytical research" "Hans Nelis" "Department of Pharmaceutical analysis, Department of Pharmaceutics, Department of Bio-analysis" "The present proposal pertains to the acquisition of a microtiterplate reader that will be used to -study microbial biofilms -studie nucleic acid containing gene therapy complexes -determination of hormones and mycotoxines in food -study of oligomeric drugs in various tissues" "Modelling of the drying process of porous granules in pharmaceutical continuous operation: a mechanistic approach" "Thomas De Beer" "Department of Pharmaceutical analysis" "Mechanistic models of pharmaceutical processes are required to predict and control the continuous production of tablets based on real-time measurements and adjustment of significant process variables. The development of these models will adopt a step-wise approach. In this project the focus will be the drying process of wer granules in a fluidized bed dryer." "Implementation of Process Analytical Technology (PAT) systems in Pharmaceutical Production Processes" "Thomas De Beer" "Department of Pharmaceutical analysis" "This project aims to develop a general strategy to implement and validate PAT systems in pharmaceutical production processes, allowing real-time release of the end product. Herewith, major attention is paid to the necessary use of complimentary PAT tools: in-line and real-time process analyzers (especially spectroscopic techniques), chemometrics, process control tools and knowledge management tools." "The development of a flow sheet model for a full continuous pharmaceutical from-powder-to-tablet manufacturing line to gather process knowledge and the development of control strategies" "Thomas De Beer" "Department of Pharmaceutical analysis" "Mechanistic models of pharmaceutical processes are required to predict and control the continuous production of tablets based on real-time measurements and adjustment of significant process variables. The development of these models will adopt a step-wise approach. In this project the focus will be the modelling of a full continuous from-powder-to-tablet manufacturing line" "Improving the detection of microorganisms in clinical and pharmaceutical microbiology by development of in vivo-like culture media and microcalorimetry" "Tom Coenye" "Department of Pharmaceutical analysis" "Rapid and accurate detection of microorganisms is of utmost importance in clinical and pharmaceutical microbiology. However, current methods often lack speed and/or the ability to detect low numbers of organisms. This application  addresses this, by proposing a novel approach based on the use of growth media resembling the infection site and/or isothermal microcalorimetry (IMC), a technique that measures the very small amounts of metabolic heat produced by low numbers of microorganisms. For clinical applications, IMC will be combined with the use of culture media resembling the in vivo microenvironment of prosthetic joint and urinary tract infections, in order to increase speed and sensitivity. For each type of infection, an optimal disease-specific medium will be selected and validated, and subsequently used in combination with IMC. The information obtained from the resulting thermograms will allow to detect, quantify and potentially even identify microorganisms considerably faster than with current methods. The use of IMC will also be evaluated for quality control of advanced therapy medicinal products (e.g. CAR T-cells), for which rapid sterility testing is essential for fast batch release. The high amount of T-cells in these drugs will be mimicked using Jurkat cell suspensions, that will be spiked with dilution series of relevant microorganisms. This will allow us to determine the optimal approach for IMC-based rapid sterility testing of these advanced pharmaceutical products." "Pharmaceutical process engineering for drug development and manufacturing" "Ashish Kumar" "Department of Pharmaceutical analysis" "The pharmaceutical industry has been traditionally a very innovative industry when discovering new drugs. When it comes to manufacturing platforms, the industry still relies on some very standard set of unit operations in manufacturing platform. During manufacturing, pharmaceutical raw materials (i.e., active drug compounds and excipients) are processed by several consecutive process steps or process phases, leading to a final product formulation with the predefined quality. With the increasing diversity of new products and the complexity of the solid-dosage processing at development scale, it is clear that there will be no “one size fits all” solution feasible for future factory-scale manufacturing technologies.Thus, mechanistic knowledge about the pharmaceutical manufacturing systems using process engineering principles is key to future pharmaceutical manufacturing. Such detailed knowledge can provide valuable insights in estimating the value of existing manufacturing platforms in deliver solutions for new drugs and also provide an opportunity to deliver innovative manufacturing platforms for large-scale drug manufacturing of high quality. The ultimate goal of this research is to streamline the drug product development process and develop a framework that can accelerate to value realization of new manufacturing platforms for the industry.This project aims at developing mechanistic insight about the equipment used for innovative pharmaceutical production processes (e.g., continuous manufacturing, spray drying, freeze-drying, etc.), and to exploit this knowledge in the development of advanced systems handling challenges specific to pharmaceutical processing." "Utilization of magnetic nanoparticles and carbon nanotubes for the fabrication of electrochemical sensors for the determination of some important biological and pharmaceutical compounds" "Karolien De Wael" "AXES (Antwerp X-ray Analysis, Electrochemistry and Speciation)" "This project focuses on the development of new electrochemical sensors based on nano materials. Nano materials offer many advantages due to their unique properties, including a high surface area density, so that a larger number of binding sites for a specific analyte is created. Within this project, magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) and carbon nanotubes (CNT) will act as a sensing platform for the detection of biomedical and pharmaceutical components. Magnetic nanoparticles (MNP) already have some applications in various fields such as biology and diagnostics. On the other hand, the subtle electronic properties of CNTs suggest that they, when used as electrode material in electrochemical sensors, have the ability to promote electron transfer reactions. The functionalization of nano materials offers many perspectives, such as an improved dispersion in various processes. The electrochemical and morphological characterization of such electrode material is the main focus of this PhD-project, next to the study of the activity of these sensors towards biologically and pharmaceutically relevant substances such as neurotransmitters, proteins, etc."