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Staff Profile

Dr Oisín Kavanagh

Lecturer in Pharmaceutics

Background

Background

Oisín is a pharmacist and academic at Newcastle University School of Pharmacy.

Oisín joined Newcastle University as a Lecturer in 2021. Prior to this, he studied Pharmacy at the University of Ulster where he spent his summers working on supramolecular probes and therapeutics for melanoma in Professor Callan's group. At graduation, he received the Gold medal from the Pharmaceutical Society of NI. He then completed his clinical training in his hometown of Derry before moving to the University of Limerick to complete his PhD. During this time he studied how to apply crystal engineering techniques to improve the physicochemical properties of drugs.

He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Michigan where he learned how to develop quantitative mathematical models for drug dissolution and solubility. After this, he returned to Ireland to take up a postdoctoral appointment funded by Janssen Pharmaceuticals and spent a brief period as a Lecturer at the School of Pharmacy at University College Cork before moving to Newcastle.

Research

Background

To uncover pharmaceutical problems, Oisín collaborates with a wide range of disciplines, including pharmacists, pharmaceutical scientists, chemists, and engineers at internationally renowned pharmacy departments and at multinational pharmaceutical companies. This has led to a diverse range of projects built around the central theme of investigating the important pharmaceutical characteristics of solubility and mechanical behaviour which target key scientific challenges.

Oisín is keen to hear from any student (national or international) for PhD studies, or from experienced researchers who wish to pursue a postdoctoral appointment in one of my research areas. Get in touch and let me know how I can help you work at Newcastle!

Research Interests

• Drug solubility determinations relevant to new contexts: Despite its apparent simplicity, there is much misunderstanding around the concept of solubility. This has been discussed in a recent consensus statement which highlighted that aqueous drug solubility is often reported as a single unit and often without solution pH, ionic strength and – if you're particularly unlucky – temperature data. The solid phase remaining after these measurements is also seldom reported. As such, there is currently a lack of data exploring the solubility of drugs in solvents such as urine. My preliminary data has illustrated that this may enable the greater predictive capacity of pharmacokinetic models for crystalluria.

• Mechanistic understanding of cocrystal solubility behaviour for better PBPK prediction: Current approaches to cocrystal solubility prediction have not accounted for solution activity which would be expected to change drastically after meals. Further, there is little work exploring the effect of dose number on cocrystal behaviour. A better fundamental understanding of cocrystal behaviour in these contexts can enable better predictive capacity and may enable formulation design for new therapeutic contexts.

Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ILUlsgwAAAAJ&hl=en

Teaching

Oisín teaches Pharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics across the MPharm programme at Newcastle. He is also assessment lead for all exams on the programme and supervises a range of PhD, MRes and MPharm research projects.

Publications