Biothermodynamik
Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Mirjana Minceva
Master’s Thesis
Investigating the Complexation of Active
Pharmaceutical Ingredient with carrier molecules
The pharmaceutical industry discovers new biological active compounds, also called Active Pharmaceutical
Ingredient (API), with promising fields of applications by high-throughput-screening every day. In order to analyze
the structure of an API the molecule is needed as pure product. The isolation of an API and the development of a
downstream process, however, is still challenging since an extraction solution of a plant or a fermentation broth is
a highly complex, multi-component solution.
Therefore, the pharmaceutical industry is seeking for
downstream processes that are easy, cheap, reliable, and
allows to refine an API efficiently. Selective extraction is one of
the most promising methods. By simply adding another
compound (carrier molecule) to the extract carrier molecules
shall only bind the API of interest.
The choice of a suitable carrier compound and is crucial for the
performance of such an extraction and depends on the
interaction between carrier compound and API. Therefore, in
this work the binding constant and binding stoichiometry shall
be determined by measuring thermodynamic properties at various conditions of a well-defined solution. These
fundamental investigations will serve as basis for a model-based approach of predicting interactions between
carrier compound and API.
In a nutshell:
-
literature research
MS Excel
if applicable VBA and/or Matlab
High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC)
Isothermal titration calorimetry
UV spectrometer
Requirements:
We expect a highly motivated and self-organized student that is capable of working on his/her own. Moreover, the
applicant should be interested in practical work paired with hands-on mentality. A neat documentation of all
experiments is imperative.
Begin: earliest February 2016
Contact: M. Sc. Martin Hübner
Gregor-Mendel Straße 4, 1. OG 07 (iGZW)
Phone: +49 8161.71.6171
E-Mail: [email protected]