URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Fall_2016_Melissa-McCarthy

Breaking Barriers to Cure Diseases

“The goal is to provide more effective treatments.” - Samantha Meenach

written by Colin Howarth ’16

Vials containing dry powder aerosol therapeutics.

biomedical and pharmaceutical sciences, Samantha Meenach is trying to change the way medicine breaks through these physiological barriers. Meenach and her team, which includes 12 undergraduate students, three graduate students, and a post-doc, are looking at three different types of barriers – tumors, mucus and the lungs. Other research groups

dry powders are placed in capsules. The inhaler breaks the capsule and the particles are breathed in by the patient. “The goal is to provide more effective treatments,” Meenach said. “Scientists in general are getting smarter at developing better particle systems for delivering drugs. But what we’ve seen, I think in the last five, six

One of the greatest challenges in treating cancer is penetrating tumors with medicine. Scientists are able to deliver medicine to the parameter of the tumor, but often fail to cross the tumor’s membrane because of its highly pressurized nature. As an assistant professor in two University of Rhode Island (URI) departments chemical engineering, and

have also focused on penetrating physiological barriers, but what separates Meenach’s team from the rest is her use of an aerosol application, or an inhaler, to deliver medicines directly to the lungs. Her team uses either nanoparticles or microparticles, that combine a polymer and a drug, to provide a controlled delivery of drugs. The particles in the form of

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