Name: Dwi Lestari Priwitaningrum
Room: ZH 255
Phone: +31534893584/+31629857156
Email: d.l.priwitaningrum@utwente.nl
Biography
In 1993, Dwi started her education at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB), Indonesia. After several years working in practical field, such as community pharmacy and internship at pharmaceutical industries, she decided to continue her study and then obtained her Master of Science in 2008. During her master study, she worked with alginate to develop a gastric delivery system in the form of hard alginate capsule to prevent iron-induced gastric side-effects in iron deficiency anemia patients. In 2008, she was appointed to be an academic staff at Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Sumatera Utara, Medan, Indonesia. Her courses included Physical Pharmacy and Oral Controlled Drug Delivery.
Since December 2012, she joined The Department of Targeted Therapeutics, MIRA Institute, University of Twente to undertake her PhD Study in Tumor-specific Targeting of Potent Natural Compounds Using Alginate Nanoparticles.
Current Project
Cancer is one of major health problems worldwide. Cancer cells are highly mutated cells and utilize multiple molecular mechanisms to survive, proliferate, and undergo metastasis. Most of the chemotherapeutics fail in clinic due to induction of several counter-mechanisms. Hence, targeting cancer at the molecular level might be the most effective way to conquer cancer. As many natural compounds act by targeting multiple signaling pathways, they keep high therapeutic potential to treat cancer. However, to achieve their therapeutic efficacy, tumor-specific delivery is a highly essential step which can be achieved by using a nanocarrier system.
Alginate nanoparticles are promising nanocarrier due to their low toxicity, non-immunogenicity, good biocompatibility, as well as biodegradability properties. In this project, we will screen potent natural compounds and deliver them to tumor site using alginate nanoparticles as well as evaluate their efficacy both in vitro and in vivo using mouse tumor model.