Sruthi Sreekumar successfully defended her PhD thesis

Today, Sruthi Sreekumar successfully defended her PhD thesis on the influence of structural parameters of partially acetylated chitosan polymers on their nanoformulation, in the presence of her Doctoral Committee, Bruno Moerschbacher, Francisco Goycoolea from the University of Leeds, and Prof. Stefan Schneider from the Institute of Dermatology und Venerology at Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf. Her PhD was financially supported by a DAAD fellowship, and by our European project Nano3Bio. Initially together with our former postdoc Dr. Gustavo Rivera, later through collaborations with Prof. José Lagaron from the CSIC Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology in Valencia, Spain, and Prof. Ioannis Chronakis and Dr. Ana Mendes from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, she investigated how factors such as the degrees of polymerisation and acetylation of the chitosans, their concentration and viscosity in solution as well as different parameters of the protocols influence the size and bioactivities of chitosan nanoparticles formed by ionic gelation or electrospraying. In contrast to many reports given in the literature, these were systematic studies and they not only described, but also physico-chemically explained these influences. Finally, when Jasper Wattjes had developed ways of preparing chitosan polymers with other-than-random patterns of acetylation, she was for the first time ever able to analyse the influence of this parameter on nanoformulations of these novel chitosans. Sruthi combines an impressive width of expertise, from physico-chemistry to biochemistry and bioanalytics, and we are glad that she will continue to support us for a little longer in our new nanoControl project.