Amina Ferraz - Academic Staff

Dr Amina Ferraz is a Principal Lecturer at the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences with a clinical pharmacy background and industrial experience. She is also a fully registered pharmacist working closely with other healthcare professionals to develop new and existing services in line with the needs of the patients and providing outstanding care, with a real passion for improving their therapy and quality of life.

Amina is the School Lead for student recruitment and is currently the Admissions Tutor for all Undergraduate and Postgraduate programmes within the School.

Amina graduated with a Pharmacy (MPharm) degree from UCL School of Pharmacy, University of London, before completing a PhD in Pharmaceutical Science, in collaboration with AstraZeneca, at the same University. Her PhD work involved the production of a stable pressurised metered dose inhaler (pMDI) system, which forms a drug carrier upon delivery from the pMDI.

She then worked at Pfizer, as a senior Pharmaceutical Scientist, where she was responsible for the development of new inhaled products; including the development of novel dry powder inhaled products and progressing them to Phase I/Phase II studies and coordinating clinical trials. She became experienced in development, scale-up, process validation and technology transfer of inhaled formulations, including device-based products. She has a broad pharmaceutical background in areas of formulation development, materials science and manufacturing.

Qualifications

Amina's research interests within the pulmonary drug delivery area are twin-tracked; she is interested in drug targeting using liposomal pressurised metered dose inhaler (pMDI) and dry powder inhaler (DPI) systems, and inhaled formulation ex vivo investigations. Pulmonary drug delivery of liposome-entrapped drugs can prolong drug residence in the respiratory tract, which may prolong the therapeutic effects within the lung and reduce systemic side effects. Unfortunately, liposomes as aqueous dispersions are very unstable and are difficult to manufacture on a large scale when formulated by the conventional method. Therefore, Amina's work aims at entrapping drugs within spontaneously formed liposomes in vitro and within the aqueous environment of the respiratory tract in vivo, and achieving a controlled release profile as a means for drug targeting using liposomal pMDIs and DPIs. Many patients use their inhaled therapy incorrectly achieving variable lung deposition. Specifically, patients with asthma and COPD do not achieve best use of their inhalers. Some patients cannot breathe strongly enough to release the drug and others struggle to handle the device. The difference between an ‘effective’ and less effective aerosolisation profile in terms of airway penetration remains to be investigated, and it is unknown what the correct formulation/device combination is for patients therefore Amina is interested in studying the relationship between in vitro/in vivo data, understanding patient parameters, inter-patient variability for pMDIs and passive DPIs, and developing a better understanding of the interaction between formulation, device and patient. She works closely with several hospitals and clinics, as well as industrial partners, to help achieve a better understanding of such interactions.