Shady Farah

Ph.D.: Medicinal Chemistry, The Institute for Drug Research-School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2014

M.Sc.: (Direct track to PhD) Medicinal Chemistry, The Institute for Drug Research-School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2014

B.Sc.: Medicinal Chemistry, The Institute for Drug Research-School of Pharmacy, Faculty of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2014

Main Nano Field: Synthesis and engineering of bioactive and therapeutic functionalized nanoparticles

Research interests: My research interests are designing and engineering novel bioactive functionalized biomaterials and nanoparticles with desired and programmable properties, as well as understanding the correlation between materials structure (at the molecular and microstructure level) and properties including function at different environments and conditions in order to design efficient valuable medical and therapeutic materials, delivery systems and medical devices.

I’m particularly interested in, polymers, specifically functionalized polymers (e.g. biodegradable polymers). Biodegradable synthetic polymers propose several advantages over other materials for numerous uses. The main advantage reached is the ability to tailor properties.

I’m interested in engineering smart biodegradable innovative materials and Nano formulations by introduction of functional groups as strategy to shape and modulate polymers properties. Derivatives bearing new functional groups along the polymer backbone would be a valuable extension of the present arsenal of biodegradable polymers accruing new properties (for example biodegradable conductive polymers). For example: The conversion of bifunctional amino acids, into their corresponding hydroxy derivatives will result in crosslinkers formation. These crosslinkers will allow the production of almost endless new classes of crosslinked polyesters (with enhanced mechanical properties), shape-memory and thermos-responsive polycarbonates and polyanhydrides (fast degradable polymers). Another approach is synthesizing glyco-polyesters from saccharides.

This class of biopolymers inherit advantages of naturally abundant polysaccharides that offer tailored polymer properties (i.e. physical, mechanical, degradability) that may possess improved merits. Glyco-polyesters can be further functionalized with a lot of moieties possessing new properties and utilize for functional bioactive polymers engineering or can be crosslinked either by copolymerization of α-hydroxy acids or with natural diacids and other molecules to form mechanically stable hydrogels, drug nanocarriers, D&L (R&S) nanocomplexes, 3D-matrixes for cells encapsulations and biodegradable scaffolds for tissue engineers. In addition, I have a special affinity to study the development of novel crystalline nanoformulations of drugs with and without polymers for extended drug delivery purposes and their potential for enhancement function of implants and cells based encapsulations - living drug factories.

In my research, the synthesis of functionalized nanoparticles ranges from natural to fully synthetic polymers, medicinal nanoparticles, and nanocarriers, nanostereo complexes, nanocrystals and nanoformulations.