Elena Menchi is currently a final year PhD student in the Laboratory of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics of the ULB under the supervision of Prof. Karim Amighi and Prof. Nathalie Wauthoz.
Elena has a Master’s degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the ULB. During her studies, she was awarded the “Fleurice Mercier” Prize and the “Pharmacien et Doctoresse Nedeljkovitch” Prize. Elena also completed a 3-month internship on a collaborative project between two laboratories of the Faculty of Pharmacy of the ULB, respectively the Laboratory of Pharmaceutical Microbiology and Hygiene and the Laboratory of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics. At that time, she worked on lung cells to evaluate their tolerance to a combination of drugs for which a synergy has been demonstrated against Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
After obtaining her Master’s degree, Elena started her PhD studies. Her research work is funded by a grant from the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research “FNRS” fellowship. Elena’s project aims to develop innovative treatments to overcome problems of lung deposition and dissolution of drugs, which are poorly controlled from marketed products commonly used in the maintenance treatment of asthma. The aim is to formulate dry powder combinations of drugs to enable them to express their full therapeutic potential in a single-daily dose delivered by a single dry powder inhaler.
Elena was awarded a travel grant in 2018 for the 5th Workshop on Pulmonary Drug Delivery and 1st SimInhale Summer School at Trinity College, Dublin. This is her first time attending the DDL Conference.
