Marvin Mengyang Liu, has been awarded a highly prestigious “on-demand talk award” at the International Controlled Release Society (CRS) 2021 Conference. Previously, Marvin was awarded as the ‘best oral presenter’ at the 2019 Australian CRS meeting, which provided him with a bursary towards attending the 2021 international conference. In addition this this, Marvin won 2nd runner up award for his ‘elevator pitch’ at this year’s University of Auckland’s HealtheX Student Conference.
Marvin Liu is a current Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Associate Professor Jingyuan Wen, Associate Professor Darren Svirskis, Professor Thomas Proft and Dr. Jacelyn Loh. His research focusses on preformulation, nanotechnology, peptide delivery and oral/topical applications.
The awarded presentation is titled by ‘Preformulation and Degradation Kinetic Studies towards A Nanocarrier System for Thymopentin’. Thymopentin (TP5) is an immunomodulatory agent with a long history of autoimmune disease treatment and modulating immunodepression. However, its clinical effectiveness is limited by its chemical instability, poor permeability, and rapid degradation in the body. Therefore, frequent parenteral administration is required. This oral talk hypothesised that by screening preformulation parameters of TP5, a corresponded nanocarrier could be developed and optimized. It may provide an alternative strategy to enhance TP5’s stability and permeability via non-invasive oral administration. TP5 showed enormous degradation by numerous stressors, and the highest degradation was under alkaline conditions. Additionally, TP5 was also susceptible to degradation by various enzymes found in the digestive tract. The PEG-niosomes have shown significant enhancement of stability and permeability of TP5 compared to TP5 in solution. This delivery system also promises to improve oral delivery for other bioactive compounds with similar physiochemical properties.
Further studies in cell line assays and in vivo animal work will direct the search for effective and reliable modulating immunodepression for humans in the future.
For more information contact Associate Professor Jing Wen j.wen@auckland.ac.nz
