Tamara Mengoni successfully defended her PhD thesis

Today, Tamara Mengoni successfully defended her PhD thesis on soft biopolymer-based nanocarriers for drug and gene delivery. This is the first of this year’s doctoral defences from the Goycoolea group. Even after his move to the University of Leeds, Francisco Goycoolea remained the supervisor of Tamara’s work, with Bruno Moerschbacher and Martin Götte from the Klinik für Frauenheilkunde und Geburtshilfe of the University Hospital Münster being the other two members of her doctoral committee. Tamara’s project had a difficult start, the focus of her work had to shift several times, but she eventually managed to produce a surprisingly and convincingly comprehensive thesis. She produced chitosan-coated liposomes for the delivery of the neuropeptide substance P for topical application to improve wound healing, and nicotine-loaded alginate nanocapsules for buccal drug delivery to help people who want to stop smoking. And she improved the efficacy of chitosan nanoparticles for gene delivery to human cells, e.g. by using our novel biotechnologically produced chitosan polymers with non-random patterns of acetylation. This work not only convinced her committee, but also the Italian health-care company S.I.I.T. in Milano which offered her a position. We have rarely had a doctoral candidate who already secured a position in Industry even before being baptized for the doctorate! Congratulations to Tamara and all the best success in your future career - do keep in touch!