History was made in late 2023, when Nigeria’s Prof. Ijeoma Florence Uchegbu was elected 7th president of Wolfson College, one of the 31 colleges of the University of Cambridge. She is to succeed the current President, Professor Jane Clarke, from 1 October 2024. By that historic election, Uchegbu becomes the first black woman to hold the prestigious position, since the founding of the college in 1965.
Generally, considerations for election to such a significant post include outstanding academic achievements, strong leadership skills and extensive experience in higher education and research. In the case of Uchegbu, however, her emergence came not just because she met the above requirements but because she has distinguished herself as one of the shapers of the future of pharmaceutical science.
Indeed, within the past decade, the pharmaceutical world has witnessed a radical innovation that is redefining the process of drug development and reconfiguring the mechanisms of drug delivery. It is the application of nanotechnology to Pharmacy, otherwise known as pharmaceutical nanoscience. One of the luminaries driving this disruptive change is Prof. Uchegbu.
To understand the immensity of this ongoing scientific revolution, it is important to understand that while pharmaceutical science has triggered tremendous advances in drug development and delivery over the years, major limitations persist that warrant a paradigm shift. For instance, with the conventional drug delivery systems (oral tablets, capsules, injections, and topical preparations), there is the challenge of poor solubility and bioavailability, which often results in low efficacy, requiring higher doses of a drug or more frequent dosing.
Again, conventional drug delivery systems are often unable to target specific tissues or cells, which makes them affect healthy cells along with diseased cells, causing adverse effects and toxicity. Added to this are imitations with sustained drug release and stability issues.
A new dawn
Fortunately, however, these limitations are being rapidly dismantled by the birth of pharmaceutical nanoscience. This emerging field of medical science exploits the unique physicochemical properties of nanoparticles to ensure novel drug delivery systems that ensure better efficacy, safety, and patient compliance. In simple terms, pharmaceutical nanoscience harnesses the power of minuscule particles (often measuring mere nanometres) to carry therapeutic payloads to their intended destinations within the body, thus, ensuring unprecedented control over drug release, bioavailability, and pharmacokinetics.
These nanoparticulate drug delivery systems have increasingly proved invaluable in gene therapy, cancer therapy, AIDS therapy, and radiation. They are also being used to transport proteins, antibiotics, and vaccinations, as well as serve as vesicles to cross the blood–brain.
According to Uchegbu, “When the drug is encapsulated in nanoparticles, we can use the particular features of the nanoparticles to control where the drugs go in the body. We can dose eye drops that stay in the eye tissues, deliver high quantities of drugs to the eye tissues and do not go to the blood, and we can dose drugs that go to the brain and do not predominantly accumulate in the blood and other organs. This means that we can reduce side effects and make the drugs more effective.”
The game-changer
Professor Uchegbu is a professor of pharmaceutical nanoscience at University College London. With over 30 years’ experience in the field of pharmaceutical research, she has worked extensively on developing nanotechnologies for efficient drug delivery, leading to her holding of several patents for drug delivery and biocompatible polymers. She specifically developed new types of polymers that self-assemble to form nanoscale structures, which can be used to deliver drugs to specific sites in the body.
Uchegbu has also made contributions to the field of pulmonary drug delivery. She has developed new techniques for creating inhalable drugs that can be used to treat respiratory diseases such as asthma and COPD. She has also contributed to the education of students in pharmaceutical nanoscience. In the process, she has developed educational resources (including globally acclaimed books) and programmes to train the next generation of nanomedicine researchers.
Uchegbu was the first to show that peptides could be delivered across the blood brain barrier to elicit a pharmacological response, when presented as peptide drug nanofibers and the first to demonstrate, through definitive pharmacology and pharmacokinetics evidence, peptide transport into the brain, using peptide nanoparticles delivered through the nose to brain route. These findings led her to develop the enkephalin pain medicine candidate (NES100), designed to address the opioid crisis.
In preclinical studies, NES100 showed no analgesic tolerance, reward seeking behaviour or potential to cause significant constipation. NES100 has been out licensed to Virpax Pharmaceuticals and is currently being developed by the US National Centre for Advancing Translational Studies. If successful, this will be the first neuropeptide medicine approval and it will have been made possible by the innovation originating from Uchegbu and her team.
Uchegbu is also a co-founder and chief scientific officer of Nanomerics, a pharmaceutical nanotechnology company specialising in drug delivery solutions for poorly water-soluble drugs, nucleic acids and peptides. The company is developing structures that can transport antibodies that can cross the blood–brain barrier. Nanomerics developed molecular envelope technology nanoparticles from amphiphilic polymers that self-assemble. The company licenced the medicine NM133 eyedrops to Iacta Pharmaceuticals, in California, in 2017. NM133 contains cyclosporine A and can be used to treat dry eye. She is equally a governor of the Wellcome, a large biomedical research charity.
Uchegbu serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Controlled Release. She has served as the scientific secretary of the Controlled Release Society. She is editor-in-chief of Pharmaceutical Nanotechnology. She is on the healthcare strategy advisory team of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.
Background and career path
Prof. Uchegbu was born in 1961, in Hackney, East London, where she lived and had her early education. In 1973, her Nigerian parents brought her back to live in Owerri, Imo State. She completed her secondary education at Owerri Girls Secondary School (1974-1976), before proceeding to the University of Benin, where she obtained her pharmacy degree, in 1981. Thereafter, she went to the University of Lagos for her master’s degree, while being a member of staff.
Uchegbu returned to the UK in 1990 and enrolled for her PhD programme at the University of London in 1991, specialising in Medicines Development. After obtaining her PhD in 1994, she was appointed to a lectureship in drug delivery in 1997 at the University of Strathclyde. She became a senior lecturer in 2000 and a professor of drug delivery in 2002. Here she worked on polymer self-assembly, identifying materials that could form stable nanosystems. She demonstrated that polymer molecular weight could be used to control the size of vesicles. She then joined the School of Pharmacy, University of London, as a professor of pharmaceutical nanoscience in 2006 before ultimately joining UCL in 2012.
She has risen through the ranks over the years, taking on diverse roles and responsibilities. These include being the school’s pro-vice provost for Africa and the Middle East, as well as provost’s envoy for race equality (2015-2021).
Awards and recognitions
In recognition of her massive contributions to scientific research, innovation, leadership and scholarship, Uchegbu has received other prestigious honours and recognitions. In 2007, she received the Women of Outstanding Achievement in Science Engineering and Technology award from the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. In 2012, she was named Pharmaceutical Scientist of the Year by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. In 2013, the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences inducted her as Eminent Fellow. That same year, she was inducted into the Controlled Release Society College of Fellows.
In 2016, Uchegbu received the Innovative Science Award from the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences. A year later, her company, Nanomerics won first prize for its Molecular Envelope Technology at the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Emerging Technologies Competition (Health category). In 2021, the distinguished professor was named Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.
