Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Technology

Aseel Samaro

Aseel Samaro

Laboratory of Pharmaceutical TechnologyAseel Samaro
Ottergemsesteenweg 460
B-9000 Gent(Belgium)
Tel. : +32-9-264.80.39
E-mail :



Biography


Pharm. Aseel graduated as a pharmacist in 2012 from "An-Najah National University - Palestine. In 2013, Aseel obtained MSc in Drug Delivery from University College London - UK with a research project entitled ‘Development of Spray Dried Melatonin Microspheres for Pulmonary Delivery’. For the period of 2014-2016, Aseel worked as an instructor in pharmaceutics in the faculty of Pharmacy Nursing and Health Professions at Birzeit University - Palestine. In August 2016, Aseel has been awarded a scholarship from the Palestinian Group Foundation to commence her PhD graduate studies at Ghent University. In the same year, she started her PhD research on ‘Extrusion and downstream processing’ in the laboratory of Pharmaceutical Technology.

Summary of Research Project(s)

My research project focuses on hot melt extrusion (HME) and downstream processing. Initially, the performance of a newly synthesized thermoplastic Polyoxazolines was investigated as matrix excipient for the production of sustained release tablets via three different processing routes (a) HME /injection moulding (IM), (b) HME/milling/compression and (c) direct compression (DC). Sustained release of highly dosed, highly soluble API’s from a matrix tablet is challenging. Thus, the need to investigate the behavior of novel thermoplastic matrix excipients with improved characteristics is essential for the manufacturing of high drug loaded dosage forms.
Secondly, fused deposition modelling (FDM) has gained a lot of interest as an alternative HME downstream processing technique. 3D printing has shown a lot of potential for the manufacturing of personalized medicine. Different studies showed a promising future for fused deposition modelling (FDM) to prepare tablets using various pharmaceutical polymers. However, limited number of studies linked the mechanical and rheological properties with the suitability of different thermoplastic polymers for FDM. The main objective of this work is to explore the potential of coupling FDM with hot melt extrusion (HME) to produce tablets with different release behaviour.