SPRING 2025

• We received a new NIH R01 grant!
• We welcomed a new PhD student, Balaji Govindaswamy, to our team!

FALL 2024

• Congratulations to the team on the new papers published in the Journal of Controlled Release and the  European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics!
• We welcomed Vivek Basudkar to our team! Vivek is a first-year PhD student!
• We welcomed Rocco Caprara to our team! Rocco is an undergrad researcher from BME!
• Congratulations to Purva on receiving the top prize in the 3-minute thesis competition at the AAPS PharmSci 360 meeting!
• Congratulations to Purva on winning a GSPS award in the PhD candidate category!
• We received a NIH R01 grant to support the development of extracellular vesicles as carriers for mitochondria and therapeutic proteins! Lots of gratitude to our phenomenal collaborators and team Manickam lab!!!

FALL 2023

• Congratulations to Purva on winning one of the three awards in the PhD candidate category at the annual GSPS holiday luncheon!
• Congratulations to Purva on publishing her IL-LNP project in Nanoscale Advances!
• Congratulations to Kandarp on publishing his comprehensive exam as a review article in Expert Opinion in Drug Delivery

SUMMER 2023

• The lab got a DoD ALS Therapeutic Idea grant to develop mitochondria-containing extracellular vesicles!
• Devika won a Young Investigator award in Bioengineering at the 2023 Controlled Release Society meeting!
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• We welcomed Ella Hildebrand as our summer neuroscience research trainee!

spring 2023

• Check out our new paper published in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews
• Check out our new paper published in the Journal of Controlled Release

FALL 2022

• Purva and Kandarp passed their PhD comprehensive exams!
• Devika received a 2022 CMBE Young Innovator award at the BMES conference!
• Check out our new paper on delivery of ATP using lipid nanoparticles now published in European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics!

SUMMER 2022

• Maura Farinelli and Abigail Sullivan won both awards available at the 2022 Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium! Congratulations!
  

  

  

  
• Check out our new paper published in the 2022 CMBE Young Innovators special issue! (see Publications)

SPRING 2022

• Our awesome PharmD/BSPS researcher, Duncan Dobbins, won the Pharmaceutical Sciences Research Award at the 2022 Undergraduate Research & Scholarship Symposium! Congratulations, Duncan!
• Check our new JCR oration (See Publications) on harnessing innate EV mitochondria as a drug!

FALL 2021

• Congratulations to Kandarp (third from left) on his 2021 AAPS pre-candidate award!

• Congratulations to Purva on publishing her first, first-author paper in The AAPS J!

• Kandarp won an award at the annual Duquesne GSPS-AAPS Student Chapter celebration!

• Devika co-organized the 2021 NIPTE Research Conference: https://nipte.org/conferences-events/2021-nipte-research-conference/ and moderated and spoke at the Nanotechnology session.
• Devika gave a talk in the Pharmaceutics department at the University College London.
• Purva presented her LNP-neural cell delivery research at the 2021 AAPS PharmSci 360 meeting! https://www.aaps.org/pharmsci/annual-meeting
• Congratulations to Purva on the acceptance of her first paper for publication in The AAPS J! She is the first-author on this paper as well!
• Started the academic year with a bang! Anisha’s EV work was published in the Journal of Controlled Release: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168365921004442

SUMMER 2021

• Check out our new preprints!

A. D’Souza, A. Burch, K. M. Dave, A. Sreeram, M. J. Reynolds, D. Dobbins et al. Microvesicles Transfer Mitochondria and Increase Mitochondrial Function in Brain Endothelial Cells bioRxiv 2021 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.10.439214v2

P. Khare, K. M. Dave, Y. S. Kamte, M. A. Manoharan, L. A. O’Donnell, D S Manickam. Development of lipidoid nanoparticles for siRNA delivery to neural cells. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.454207v1

• Duncan Dobbins, our NURE fellow, presented his research at the 2021 Summer Undergraduate Research Program symposium! Well done, Duncan!
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• Dr. Manickam spoke at the JCR session in the 2021 CRS meeting: https://2021.controlledreleasesociety.org/invited-speakers.html

SPRING 2021

• Dr. Manickam to speak at the CRS Gene Delivery and Gene Editing Focus Group webinar – join us here:Shorturl.at/lqCQ1 Passcode: 280087
• Dr. Manickam will speak at the OSU Pharmacy seminar series: registration is open and free for all!  Register here!
• Dr. Manickam gave a talk at the 2021 AAPS NBC
• Dr. Manickam received a Faculty Development Fund award: https://twitter.com/DuquesnePharm/status/1392962859202605056
• Congratulations to Riyan on winning the Award for Undergraduate Research sponsored by the School of Pharmacy! https://www.duq.edu/research/student-research/undergraduate-research/virtual-urss-information/virtual-urss-award-winners
• Check out our first preprint on bioRxiv: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.10.439214v1
• Congratulations to Anisha on winning the first prize in the Pharmaceutics on-demand talk session at PSRS! https://community.aaps.org/events/event-description?CalendarEventKey=a2dabff0-d71a-4cfd-8dd8-f69cef7d0baa&CommunityKey=0f05d6eb-cc50-42bc-bb80-961fa4fc0085&Home=%2Faaps%2Fevents%2Fupcoming-events
• Dr. Manickam joined the Editorial Board of the Journal of Controlled Release: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-controlled-release/editorial-board
• Our review on “Targeting the Blood-Brain Barrier for the Delivery of Stroke Therapies” was accepted for publication in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews! Check it out!
• The new year started out great for us with the publication of our first paper on engineering extracellular vesicles (EVs)! in the AAPS PharmSciTech theme issue on NIPTE Research and Perspective: Advances in Nanotechnology-Based Drug Delivery – https://rdcu.be/cc1mc

FALL 2020

• A huge congratulations to Kandarp for winning the 1st place in the PhD Track Student Award in the 2020 Graduate Student Awards presented by the Duquesne University AAPS Student Chapter and the Duquesne University Division of Pharmaceutical, Administrative, and Social Sciences.
• Congratulations to Anisha on her Women In STEM Travel Award!
• Anisha participated in a LIVE panel discussion (Special Poster Collection on Drug Delivery and Gene Therapy) at the 2020 AAPS PharmSci 360 meeting: https://twitter.com/manickam_lab/status/1324424575824863239
• Anisha’s AAPS abstract (Submission ID# 895037, Entitled: Extracellular Vesicles for the Delivery of Neurotrophin DNA to Brain Endothelial Cells for a Special Poster Collection) was selected for a Special Poster Collection at the Annual AAPS meeting (https://www.eventscribe.com/2020/PharmSci360/)-Special Poster Collections are live panel discussion led by AAPS leaders! Congratulations to Anisha and the co-authors, Wanzhu and Kandarp! This is a such a nice honor and recognition.

SUMMER 2020

• Kandarp’s second paper on “DNA Polyplexes of a Phosphorylcholine-based Zwitterionic Polymer for Gene Delivery” was accepted for publication in Pharmaceutical Research!
• Kandarp won a 2020 AAPS Best Abstract Award! The abstract title is: Development of safe and efficient zwitterionic polymer-based Interferon-β1 DNA polyplexes for glioblastoma therapy. A well-deserved recognition for a hardworking and brilliant student – so proud of him!

SPRING 2020

• Congratulations to Kandarp on his first, first-author paper published in PLOS ONE! Lalah Ali, our past PharmD researcher is a co-author on this paper. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0231597
• Welcome, Purva and Suneera, our new PhD graduate students!

FALL 2019

• Kandarp won a PhD Pre-candidate Student Award presented by DU AAPS Student Chapter and the Division of the Pharmaceutical, Administrative and Social Sciences! Congratulations, Kandarp! Very well-deserved.
• Welcome, Anisha, our new postdoc!
• Welcome, Riyan and Courtney, our new PharmD research assistants!

SUMMER 2019

• Katie and Lalah presented their work at the 2019 Undergraduate Research Symposium. We are proud of you both!
• Katie won an award for the best abstract in the NURE category, Congratulations!
• Welcome, Lindsay Kadlecik, our new PharmD research assistant!
• Welcome, Katie Hoover, our 2019 Neurosciences Undergraduate Research Experiences (NURE) Fellow.

SPRING 2019

• Dr. Kristy Ainslie to visit Duquesne on February 21st and present a talk.
• Group Meeting Schedule

FALL 2018

• Group Meeting Schedule

SUmmer 2018

• Sydney presented at the 2018 Undergraduate Research Symposium
• Welcome our summer NURE fellow, Sydney Graves!
• Group Meeting Schedule
  

  SPRING 2018

• Dr. Hamid Ghandehari to visit Duquesne on April 12th and present a talk.
• Dr. Manickam received a Faculty Development Fund award.
• Kandarp and Wanzhu presented talks at the 2018 Duquesne GSRS
• Interested in Undergraduate Research? Apply Now!
• Dr. Kevin Rice to speak at Duquesne on February 1!
• Group Meeting Schedule
• Welcome, Linjiang! Linjiang Han (MS Graduate Student in Biotechnology) started his research internship in our lab.
• Welcome, Alyssa! Alyssa Linden (PY2 student in Duquesne’s PharmD program) started as an undergraduate research assistant in our lab.
• Apply now! Pain and Neurodegeneration Summer Undergraduate Research Program From the program coordinators: “The Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA) Pain Undergraduate Research Experience (PURE) and Neurodegenerative Undergraduate Research Experience (NURE) programs were awarded an NIH R25 and I am looking to you for help in spreading the word about these programs and letting students know they can apply. Applications are due February 15th 2018. “Check out this link for more: http://www.duq.edu/about/centers-and-institutes/chronic-pain-research-consortium/pain-education/pain-fellowship

SPRING 2018

• We are hiring! We are looking to hire an postdoctoral scientist with a background in Polymer Chemistry. The successful candidate will be responsible for synthesizing novel polymers for CNS drug (biotherapeutics such as nucleic acids and polypeptides) delivery applications. Applicants should have a recent PhD degree with strong background in polymer chemistry and characterization. Experience in in vitro cell culture studies and in vivo rodent studies will be helpful. Interested candidates must submit a CV and names of 2-3 references to Dr. Devika Manickam (soundaramanickd@duq.edu) or apply at http://www.duq.edu/x155710.xml

FALL 2017

• Welcome! Kandarp Dave joined the lab as a PhD graduate student.