Padrela Research Group

Nano(bio)pharmaceutical Process Development

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Welcome to the Padrela Research Group

Luis is an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemical Sciences at the University of Limerick (Ireland), Course Director in the BSc in Industrial Biochemistry programme and a Principle Investigator at the Bernal Institute. He is a Funded Investigator at SSPC (the SFI Research Centre for Pharmaceuticals), Principle Investigator at PMTC (Pharmaceutical Technology Centre) and has been awarded grants as PI/Co-PI from various funding agencies (EU H2020, Science Foundation Ireland, Enterprise Ireland).

Luis studied Biochemistry at undergraduate level before obtaining his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Lisbon (Portugal). Following his PhD, Luis worked in the pharmaceutical industry for almost 2 years (Hovione FarmaCiência, Portugal) before joining SSPC in UL as a Postdoctoral Researcher and as a Senior Research Fellow later on. Luis worked in different institutions (academia and industry) and countries (Ireland, Portugal and Sweden) focusing his research on Particle Engineering Technologies, Continuous Nanocrystallization and (Bio)Pharmaceutical Processing.

 

 

Research Team

The Padrela research group currently consists of 1 Post Doctoral researcher and 7 PhD students.

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Publications

The most recent published research from the Padrela group.

 

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Opportunities for collaborations post-doctoral and PhD positions.

Recent Articles

Production of biopharmaceutical dried-powders using supercritical CO2 technology
Solid-state and particle size control of pharmaceutical cocrystals using atomization-based techniques
Controlling the Polymorphism of Indomethacin with Poloxamer 407 in a Gas Antisolvent Crystallization Process
Production of hydrochlorothiazide nanoparticles with increased permeability using top-spray coating process

Group News

Representation at the European Meeting on Supercritical Fluids (EMSF) 2023, Budapest, Hungary.

Luis Padrela:                 Keynote Presentation

Aaron O’Sullivan:         Keynote Presentation

Snehashis Nandi:         2 Oral Presentations

Mohamad Baassiri:     Poster Presentation

Group Photo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SFI Research Infrastructure Grant

Congratulations to Dr. Luis Padrela for being one of 4 researchers at University of Limerick in receiving almost €4.3m in funding for projects under the SFI Research Infrastructure Programme. Dr. Padrela’s project is entitled “Next Generation Nanopharma Process Development Platform (NaPRO)”

Lead Applicant: Dr Luis Padrela, Department of Chemical Sciences and Bernal Institute

Nanopharmaceuticals have the potential to overcome the current barriers that life-saving medicines are facing to reach the market. However, drug development and launch of novel medicines containing nanomaterials are being hampered world-wide by limitations in the ability to develop robust and scalable compliant methods of production that enable progression from a small production scale (in the mg range) to a commercially relevant scale (in the kg range).

The purpose of this infrastructure is to provide a unique state-of-the-art testbed with new ‘smart’ process systems, which will allow to de-risk the scalability and manufacture of nano(bio)pharmaceuticals and facilitate the adaptation of these technologies to existing industrial facilities. Critically, this capability is not currently available in Ireland.

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Congratulations to Dr. Luis Padrela on winning the Laboratory Scientist of the Year award at the recent Laboratory Awards 2021. This award was given to Luis whose contribution to science has been outstanding in the last 24 months and is representative of the sustained contribution to science. 

Laboratory Scientist of the Year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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