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- Professor of Pharmaceutical Materials Science
- Pharmaceutics
- UCL School of Pharmacy
- Faculty of Life Sciences
Gareth received a MChem (Hons) degree from the University of Oxford in 2002. He remained in Oxford working with Prof Dermot O’Hare for a DPhil (PhD) in materials chemistry, which was completed in 2005. Gareth then spent three years working in science programme management for the UK government, before returning to Oxford to take up a post-doctoral position in 2009. In September 2010 he joined London Metropolitan University as a Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Science, and in November 2012 was appointed to the UCL School of Pharmacy as a Lecturer in Pharmaceutics. Gareth is currently Professor of Pharmaceutical Materials Science, Head of the Research Department of Pharmaceutics, the Faculty of Life Sciences Graduate Tutor for Taught Programmes, Co-Director of the EPSRC CDT in Advanced Therapeutics & Nanomedicines, and Co-Director of the EPSRC & SFI CDT in Transformative Pharmaceutical Technologies.
Gareth sits on the editorial boards for the journals WIREs Nanomedicine and Nanobiotechnology, Pharmaceutics, International Journal of Pharmaceutics, and Current Drug Delivery, as well as the EPSRC National Crystallography Service Strategic Allocations Panel, the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences New Scientists Focus Group and the UK & Ireland Controlled Release Society Committee. He is the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cluster Science and Materials Highlights and a regular reviewer for a number of journals including Chem. Mater., Nanoscale, Small, Mol. Pharm., ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., J. Solid State Chem., J. Mater. Chem., Angew. Chem., Int. J. Pharm., J. Pharm. Sci., Cryst. Growth Des., and J. Phys. Chem.


Nanoscale polymer-based drug delivery systems
To be effective, a medicine must be delivered to the right part of the body, at
the right time, and in the correct amount. We use prepare polymer-based
nanofibres or nanoparticles loaded with drug molecules, exploiting the
properties of the polymer and the advantageous properties which can be realised
when working at the nanoscale to control drug release. Fibres are prepared by
electrospinning, in which a solution containing a polymer and a functional
component is sprayed from a syringe towards a target collector with a high
voltage applied between the two. Particles are prepared using a similar process
termed electrospraying. The resulting materials generally contain the drug
molecules randomly distributed throughout the polymer, and thus can increase
the solubility and dissolution rate of poorly water soluble drugs. The
polymer/drug composites can also be used to prepare extended or delayed release
systems; such formulations can obviate the need to take frequent doses of
medicines (making a patient's life easier) and help maintain drug levels at
safe yet efficacious levels in the body. Electrospun/sprayed formulations may
further be exploited to drive "bottom-up" self-assembly processes. We
are investigating the use of these materials for the treatment of a range of
disease conditions, for instance in photo-chemo-therapy for cancer.
Inorganic nanoparticles
A wide range of solid-state materials exists in which there is vacant space: it
is often possible to fill this with a 'guest' species. We are using this
chemistry to develop advanced nanomaterials for drug delivery. Work is focussed
on layered metal hydroxides with positively charged layers and charge-balancing
anions located between them. A wide range of bioactive molecules can form
anions and be incorporated into the interlayer region to give extended-release
systems.
Vaccine adjuvants
The most effective vaccines contain a living antigen: this leads to a robust
immune response, but there is a risk that the antigen could regain virulence
and become dangerous. For safety reasons, modern vaccines increasing use
subunits of the pathogen as antigens. To stimulate an immune response to these,
"adjuvants" are added to kick-start the immune system. Most commonly,
"alum" (usually aluminium oxyhydroxide; AlOOH) is used as the
adjuvant. Alum provokes strong antibody-mediated immunity against bacterial
toxins, but cannot stimulate the cellular immune response required to eliminate
virally infected cells or cancers. We are developing alternative inorganic
vaccine adjuvants to drive different and/or more powerful immune responses, and
have recently patented significant developments in this area.
Analytical techniques
Combining synchrotron X-ray diffraction (XRD) with thermal analysis techniques gives
unprecedented insight into phase transitions in pharmaceutical materials. The
use of synchrotron radiation permits diffraction patterns to be collected in a
few seconds, meaning that we can very rapidly observe changes in the nature of
the solid materials present and correlate these with the heat signals
simultaneously being monitored by calorimetry. Recently we have used this
approach to study the stabilisation of a metastable polymorph of paracetamol
and identify the presence of multiple phases in a commercial sample of
sulfathiazole.
I teach pharmaceutics aspects of a number of modules in the UCL MPharm course, and also the MSc courses offered by the UCL School of Pharmacy, as well as contributing to programmes elsewhere in UCL (Mechanical Engineering, Chemistry).
01-OCT-2020 | Professor of Pharmaceutical Materials Science | UCL School of Pharmacy | UCL, United Kingdom |
01-JAN-2020 | Head of Research Department of Pharmaceutics | UCL School of Pharmacy | UCL, United Kingdom |
01-OCT-2018 – 30-SEP-2020 | Associate Professor in Pharmaceutics | UCL School of Pharmacy | UCL, United Kingdom |
01-OCT-2016 – 30-SEP-2018 | Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutics | UCL School of Pharmacy | UCL, United Kingdom |
05-NOV-2012 – 30-SEP-2016 | Lecturer in Pharmaceutics | UCL School of Pharmacy | UCL, United Kingdom |
10-SEP-2010 – 03-NOV-2012 | Senior Lecturer in Pharmaceutical Science | School of Human Sciences | London Metropolitan University, United Kingdom |
2018 | ATQ04 - Recognised by the HEA as a Senior Fellow | University College London | |
2012 | ATQ03 - Recognised by the HEA as a Fellow | London Metropolitan University |