Pharm. Severien Standaert graduated as pharmacist in 2019 from Ghent University where she obtained her master in Drug Development. For her Master’s thesis, she evaluated the feasibility of inkjet printing to produce multi-layered tailored dosage forms for veterinary use at Åbo Akademi University of Turku, Finland. In 2019, she started her PhD research on the optimization of gelatin microspheres loaded with paclitaxel used as IP drug delivery system for treatment of advanced ovarian cancer.
Summary of Research Project(s)
The majority of ovarian cancer patients are diagnosed at an advanced stage with peritoneal metastases because of nonspecific symptoms. This makes ovarian cancer one of the leading causes of death from gynecological malignancies in the western world. Peritoneal adhesions after cytoreductive surgery are a very common complications which compromise the quality of life of patients. Previous work aimed to develop a novel intraperitoneal formulation for both prevention of postsurgical peritoneal adhesions and prolonged IP drug delivery to improve the treatment of advanced ovarian cancer. It was demonstrated that gelatin microspheres loaded with paclitaxel could be a promising treatment. This thesis focuses on the optimization of this formulation by testing other crosslinkers and improving loading efficiency. Another part of this project is further evaluation and toxicity assessment of the microspheres in other animal models prior to a first in-human phase I clinical trial.
