Nicky Thomas is a Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at UniSA's Clinical and Health Sciences. Nicky's research is concerned with the interaction between nanomedicines and bacterial biofilms and with the development of novel strategies to combat some of the most debilitating diseases: chronic infections. His second research interest is concerned with the question of how nanomedicines can be used to improve the efficacy and safety of drugs with pharmaceutically challenging properties (e.g. poor water solubility, permeability, and high toxicity such as cancer drugs). A trained pharmacist, Nicky received his BSc in Germany (Albert-Ludwigs University, Freiburg). With several years of experience in community pharmacies, hospital pharmacies, and the pharmaceutical industry, he has specialized in the topical and oral delivery of drugs. In 2012, Nicky obtained his PhD with distinction in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Otago, New Zealand. His Ph.D. research was concerned with the fate of lipid-based drug delivery systems and concomitantly administered drugs during digestion in the body.
Timothy J Barnes is a Physical Chemist by training. He teaches drug formulation science in the Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Science Programs and nanotechnology in the Bachelor of Science Program. he is the author of more than 40 refereed international journal articles, textbook chapters, and conference papers, as well as more than 30 major reports to industry. He is actively involved in the Prestidge Research Group, which is focused on Nanomedicine and Biopharmaceutical Engineering. He is interested in developing novel therapeutic delivery strategies for both small-molecule and protein pharmaceuticals. he has also consulted for numerous pharmaceutical companies, both within Australia and internationally.
Dr. Santhni Subramaniam is an Associate Researcher in Clinical and Health Sciences at the Centre for Pharmaceutical Innovation, University of South Australia, Australia. She completed her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Science under the supervision of Prof Clive Prestidge. Her research focused on improving the delivery of antibiotics using nanotechnology for the treatment of recurrent intracellular infections. Prior to this, she completed her Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science and Bachelor of Biomedical Research (Honors) at UniSA. She is currently utilizing her formulation science knowledge to work on several industry projects. In addition to this, she is highly passionate about science outreach and communication. She actively volunteers at STEM events and presents her research to the public through various initiatives, such as Pint of Science.
Paul Joyce, a Postdoctoral Research Associate, completed his Ph.D. in Pharmacy (UniSA) in 2016, where his contribution to the fields of pharmaceutical science and materials engineering was recognized with the Postgraduate Medal for Most Outstanding Thesis and the Norton Jackson Materials Science and Engineering Highly Commended Award. Upon completing his PhD, Paul was awarded a highly competitive international Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Chalmers University of Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden) under the supervision of Prof. Fredrik Höök. Paul’s primary research interests have centralized around understanding the biophysical processes of gastrointestinal digestion for the development of innovative oral drug formulations that enhance the bioavailability of challenging therapeutics. Paul has authored 21 journal articles (14 first/lead author) that have been published in leading international journals, 1 international patent and 1 book chapter, and he has presented at more than 20 national and international conferences.
Clive A. Prestidge is currently a Professor of Clinical and Health Science, a lead researcher at UniSA's Cancer Research Institute, and head of the Nanostructure and Drug Delivery research group. Clive is the author of more than 250 refereed international journal articles, textbook chapters and conference papers and more than 100 major project reports to industry. He has taken a leadership role in a number of major collaborative projects in association with national and international industries, the ARC, and University researchers from Australia and overseas. Clive has attracted competitive research grants worth more than $15M from government and industry sources. Clive was the founder of Ceridia Pty Ltd, a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company established to commercialize the Lipoceramic drug delivery technology he invented. The Prestidge research group is focused on Drug delivery, Nanomedicine and BioPharmaceutical Engineering. Its Primary Mission is to: (1) engineer novel particle-based biomaterials with specific biological activities and to apply them to solve biopharmaceutical challenges; (2) determine mechanisms for bioactivity through advanced biophysical analyses; and (3) develop drug delivery solutions to address unmet clinical needs. Some of our overarching challenges are to: (1) deliver challenging therapeutic molecules for better medicines; (2) eradicate bacterial biofilms; and (3) optimize biotech and pharmaceutical processing and manufacturing.
