Mark Sacchetti, scientific director of the Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station, and Elham Nejati, former graduate student in Professor Sandro Mecozzi’s lab and now an alumna at Gilead Sciences, had their research on the solubility of drugs in complex lipid mixtures published in a recent edition of the AAPS PharmSciTech, a peer-reviewed online-only journal.

Lipid mixture formulations are used to enhance oral bioavailability of poorly soluble drugs, which is a major challenge in modern day drug development. Sacchetti and Nejati used a statistically designed experimental approach to assess in an unbiased manner the quantitative relationship between drug solubility and lipid composition variables. Their findings revealed a simple relationship that enables drug solubility to be predicted in complex lipid mixtures from solubility in individual ingredients. This result is considered to be of great value to formulators in the pharmaceutical industry that can simplify their work and save considerable effort and time during the formulation development of lipid dosage forms.

This research exemplifies the legacy of Emeritus Prof. George Zografi’s educational contributions to the School of Pharmacy. The Zografi Educational Advancement Fund provides one semester of graduate student support as a project assistant, where they gain practical experience in the Station industrial laboratory, as well as help advance the process and science of drug development.