Yimer Mekonnen

Contact Info

Yimer Mekonnen

Drug Quality and Registration (DruQuaR) group
Ottergemsesteenweg 460, 9000 Ghent (Belgium)

PhD Research

Title: Sustainable removal of anthelmintics as emerging environmental contaminants of high concern.

Summary:

Anthelmintics are one of the most extensively used human and veterinary medicine classes in Eastern Africa, and encompass different chemical and activity classes such as benzimidazoles, heterocycles, amino-acetonitriles and depsipeptides. While they are partly in-vivo metabolized, the majority of these drugs are excreted mainly unchanged and massively enter the environment.
The ecotoxicity of these drugs and their metabolites may present a significant harmful and persistent effect on the environment. Therefore, these substances are required to be removed from waste waters from farms and health centers, as well as from the surrounding aquatic ecosystems. Conventional sewage systems, including traditional chemical treatments, are neither effective nor sustainable. Therefore, this project will investigate alternative routes of removal, encompassing phytoremediation, adsorption to activated charcoal, enzyme-assisted degradation and photo-catalysed degradation.
The goal of this project is to comparatively evaluate different sustainable ways to eliminate selected anthelmintics from aqueous eco-compartments.

Keywords: anthelmintics, eco-toxicity, emerging environmental contaminants, sustainable removal, phytoremediation