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We have been delivering teaching and research in Pharmacy at UEA for over 20 years. In this time, we've made great progress in developing our Pharmacy research portfolio and impacting in a range of ways: from the provision of expertise to industry, patients and clinicians through to the development of new technologies and knowledge to support the search for new, safe and effective drugs.
Our strategy is driving us towards achieving impact at a local, national and international level. Our research is primarily focused on human healthcare and we are proactively creating opportunities for our researchers to work on cross-disciplinary projects to extend the reach of our expertise.
Along with our collaborations with industry, which can be seen through numerous research contracts with companies such as Boots, Evotec, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline, we also have strong relationships with healthcare providers. We have research contracts with organisations such as the National Health Service and the National Institute for Health Research in the UK as well as with international bodies, such as the Saudi Arabian Government.
We are also keen to encourage the sharing of our research as widely as possible and see this as a route to make new connections and develop new relationships with a view to creating opportunities to apply our research.
Take a look at some of the ways our Pharmacy research has had an impact:
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Serious economic benefit: and the fish are happier too
Experts from our School of Pharmacy were called in to help find a solution to a global problem, which was causing multimillion-dollar losses to the fishing industry. Changes to food for farmed salmon following the mad cow disease crisis led to an increase in the number of fish suffering from cataracts, which in turn caused reduced growth and an increased susceptibility to a range of diseases. A collaborative project, which included Dr Julie Sanderson and her team, working with the Norwegian partners and Scottish company Biomar Ltd, investigated the formation of cataracts using eye models previously developed by Dr Sanderson for investigations of the human eye. This research led to the identification of a critical period when the amino acid histidine is essential for the development of the salmon eye lens and an understanding of its role. Consequently, increasing the levels of histidine in fish feed led to a huge decrease in the incidence of cataracts. These research findings have had a massive and economically significant global impact. In sharing the research results rapidly and widely, there have been widespread changes to salmon feeding practices internationally, providing significant economic benefit across the fishing industry.
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Helping patients with swallowing difficulties
more...Dysphagia – the medical term for swallowing difficulties – can affect many people, not least the elderly, people recovering from stroke and others with long term conditions. In some cases, patients suffering from dysphagia crush tablets or mix them with foods, so they are easier to take. However, this can be dangerous or prevent the medicine being effective. Experts from our School of Pharmacy are leading the way into understanding dysphagia and the potential effects of these practices, providing crucial information to patients and doctors. In 2004 Professor David Wright and his team set up the swallowing difficulties website which currently attracts more than 6000 hits each month from patients and doctors. The site provides practical information about the safety of crushed medicines and the available alternatives to tablet. Research from the team is also posted to GPs on a monthly basis and Professor Wright authored a book for professionals prescribing medicines in 2011. In addition to this direct impact on patients and health professionals, Professor Wright is developing a gel into which tablets can be inserted to make them easier to swallow. Patents have been granted for the process and this innovation is expected to be on the market within a few years with a significant impact on quality of life for those suffering from dysphagia.
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Supporting the fight against antibiotic resistance
more...Research at UEA, which took place back in 2009, has led to the creation of a method of producing a chemical compound which plays a role in bacterial resistance to some antibiotics. As part of an international and interdisciplinary research collaboration, Dr Chris Hamilton and his team helped characterise a chemical compound called Bacillithiol, which is produced by many bacteria, such as those often found in cases of food poisoning, urinary tract infections and septicaemia. These bacteria are increasingly showing resistance to antibiotics and it is thought that preventing the production of bacillithiol may offer a target for new antibacterial drugs. This has led to a growing demand from pharmaceutical companies and academics for bacillithiol for research purposes. Having gained an in-depth understanding of the underlying mechanisms of bacillithiol – including its molecular structure - researchers at UEA developed a method of producing the compound. Through a University Proof of Concept Award, Dr Hamilton and colleagues were able to optimise production and crucially, scale it up. As a result, bacillithiol produced at UEA is now licensed to US based fine chemicals company, JEMA Biosciences, providing a direct economic benefit to the University, whilst providing the academic and pharmaceutical sectors with a valuable tool for their antibacterial research.
Research Case Studies
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Prof Dr Debi Bhattacharya - Medication Adherence Support Decision Aid
Through working with patients, NHS practitioners and policy makers, the Bhattacharya group has developed a programme of research to improve the support for patients to take their medicines as prescribed. The group have established that over 300,000 patients in England have a pill box that is filled by their community pharmacy team and that for some patients, the pill box may not be the best approach to helping them with their medicines.
The Medication Adherence Support Decision Aid (MASDA) is an algorithm for helping prescribers and patients to focus on the types of support that are most relevant to the difficulties being experienced by the individual with taking medicines as prescribed. The MASDA is currently being implemented to support practitioners across a range of healthcare settings including pharmacies, medical practices and social services. Pharmacists have told us that they welcome having a decision aid that is based on research evidence.
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Dr Andrew Beekman - Protein-Protein Interactions
Protein-protein interactions control most processes in life, in both healthy and disease states. Many diseases cause an imbalance of proteins and result in unwanted protein-protein interactions. Targeting these interactions with drug-like molecules is challenging because proteins are large molecules which interact at hydrophobic surfaces.
However, being able to control these interactions is highly desirable for treatment of disease. We have developed new methods to target protein-protein interactions, allowing us to prepare small molecules that selectively control these biomolecules. Research in the group has looks at the cancer related protein-protein interactions which keep cancer cells alive, and interactions which allow cancer to avoid the immune system.
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Dr Sheng Qi
Dr Qi has a keen interest in developing innovations in the pharmaceutical manufacturing process and controlled drug delivery technology. She has to date over 60 peer-reviewed publications and 5 book chapters in this field. Her recent work on Fused Deposition Modelling 3D Printing (FDM 3DP) of solid dispersions based oral controlled delivery of poorly soluble drugs demonstrated the potential as well as identified the technological challenges of adapting FDM 3DP for manufacturing oral solid dosage forms. She has been working with academic collaborators in engineering, manufacturing design, and computational simulation alongside industrial end users and partners to build upon process optimisation and design principles of FDM 3DP which is crucial for the healthcare industry in moving forward and adopting 3DP for future personalised medicine development and manufacturing.
Read more about our work on the pharmaceutical manufacturing process.