RACI NSW Pharmaceutical Sciences Group

Webinar

Thursday 20 May at 10.30 am to 12.00 pm

Elucidating Vaccine Formulation Stability

Presenter A/Prof Veysel Kayser

 School of Pharmacy, the University of Sydney

Formulation stability of biologics and vaccines is directly linked to the efficacy, stability, feasibility, and performance of the product; therefore, stability is imperative for their use as pharmaceutical agents. Because of the complexity of their nature, currently we have only a limited understanding of the degradation of vaccines. However, rational stabilization of biological drugs and vaccines requires understanding the mechanism of degradation at a molecular level.

Stabilization of vaccines is frequently an empirical procedure based on changes in biological activity rather than the actual degradation processes themselves. Conditions perturbing vaccine stability may involve particle aggregation as well as other complex mechanisms including many molecular interactions and sizes; hence a multi-spectroscopic and -microscopic approach is generally necessary to study them.

It is known that they are thermolabile at elevated temperatures and that recurring freeze-thaw cycles cause degradation. Vaccines are functional in a narrow pH range, and outside this range their activity drastically decreases due to a conformational change of the proteins. Reports on alterations of solution conditions and lyophilization are also somewhat limited and inconsistent. Therefore, studying the underlying mechanism of the degradation of several vaccines due to various stress conditions such as pH, temperature, and surfactant by orthogonal approaches is of utmost importance.

In this talk, Veysel will briefly cover various topics including a broad overview of vaccines, vaccine formulations and focus on influenza vaccine. Discussions about vaccine formulation and novel methods should be relevant to new generation of vaccines including those developed for COVID-19.

Veysel Kayser is an Associate Professor at The University of Sydney (USyd). He holds Ph.D. from the University of Leeds (UK) in 2004.  He further undertook post-doctoral fellowships at the Max-Planck Institute of Biochemistry (Germany) and in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT (US), and then he worked at MIT for several years as a senior staff scientist. Veysel took up his current position at USyd in 2013. For periods, he was also the Associate Dean for Research and the HDR coordinator at the then Faculty of Pharmacy and served in the Multidisciplinary Advisory Board for Marie Bashir Institute for Infectious Diseases and Biosecurity (USyd).

His research interests are in biologics and vaccines, development of biosimilars and biobetters, therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), antibody-drug-conjugates, nanoparticle-antibody complexes, protein engineering, and novel formulations of biologics and vaccines. Currently he supervises 5 PhD and 1 honours students, and mentors a visiting post-doc scientist. Veysel obtained five international patents and several patent applications are pending, published over fifty peer-reviewed research publications in reputed journals; given over 100 talks – mainly as an invited speaker, on biologics and vaccines at international scientific conferences, universities, government bodies and biopharma industry; and also serves as an editor or member of the editorial board of various journals. He has consulted for and received research funding from several pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, and patent law firms.

This webinar will be of benefit and interest to all scientists, working in academic and commercial organisations, to enhance knowledge of cutting-edge technologies.

The format of the webinar is that the presenter will give a 30-45 minute overview, followed by a further Q&A session. 

Follow the instructions and which fields to complete as an RACI member or non-member with care.  Members with an RACI account should enter their Username and Password and follow subsequent instructions.  Non-members will initially need to “Create a new account” and also follow subsequent instructions.

A $10 charge will be made for non- RACI members and free for members.

Registrations close at 12 noon, Wednesday 19 May.  Owing to webinar setup activities, later registration applications cannot be accepted.

For any queries on registration, please contact the NSW Branch coordinator, Claire Jung, Tuesday to Thursday, phone 02 9663 4920, email [email protected] or Mrs Pam Chantrell, Qld Branch coordinator, phone 0499 550 306.

Register below:

• RACI members need to log in to register with your username(your email address registered with RACI) & password.
  
• Non-members are required to create an account to enable registration. 

      *Any issues with registrations, please contact Claire Jung