Mucosal Delivery of Drugs and Biologics in Nanoparticles

Dr. Muttil is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy, at the University of New Mexico (UNM), NM, USA. Dr. Muttil's expertise is in developing novel delivery systems (micro-and nanotechnology) for vaccines and drugs against infectious diseases and cancers. His laboratory focuses on the formulation and testing of vaccines and drugs in animal models, as a needle-free delivery strategy. Some of the projects being pursued in his laboratory include pulmonary drug delivery for lung cancer, pulmonary immunization against tuberculosis, needle-free vaccination strategies against bioterrorism agents and formulating immunotherapeutic agents against cancers and infectious diseases. Dr. Muttil was educated in India, receiving his bachelor's in pharmacy in 1999 from the Dr. K.N. Modi Institute of Pharmaceutical and Educational Research in 1999, his master's in pharmacy from the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, in 2001and his PhD in pharmaceutics from the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, in 2006. He did post-doctoral research in aerosol drug and vaccine delivery at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, before coming to UNM in 2010. Dr. Muttil was awarded the Bill and Melinda Gates Grand Challenges Exploration grant in 2012, an award that is bestowed to only a few innovative ideas from around the world. Currently, he is also the chair of the UNM College of Pharmacy admissions committee.

Dr. Kunda is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at the St. John's University, New York, USA. Prior to joining St. John's, Dr. Kunda was a post-doctoral fellow at the College of Pharmacy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, with a research focus in aerosol drug and vaccine delivery. Dr. Kunda received his Bachelor's in Pharmacy (Honors) from Birla Institute of Technology & Science-Pilani(BITS-Pilani), India, Master's in Drug Delivery from the London School of Pharmacy, London, UK and a Ph.D. in Formulation and Drug Delivery from Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, UK. Dr. Kunda's dissertation focused on developing a novel pneumococcal vaccine that can be inhaled as a dry powder.Dr. Kunda's research is multi-disciplinary and his current research interests include the use of nanotechnology in developing therapeutics against infectious disease and cancer, synthesizing polymeric nanoparticles and attaching targeting moieties for site-specific delivery, formulation of amorphous solid dispersions, immunotherapy, and drug and vaccine formulation for pulmonary delivery. Dr. Kunda's laboratory specializes in developing dry powder biologics that do not require cold-chain for storage and transport thereby decreasing the cost of biologics-based products significantly. Dr. Kunda serves as an editorial board member of PLoS One and as a Review Editor for the Vaccines and Molecular Therapeutics section of the Frontiers in Immunology and Frontiers in Public Health journals. In addition, Dr. Kunda acts a reviewer for many high-impact journals such as International Journal of Pharmaceutics, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Toxicology in vitro, Pharmaceutics, Microorganisms, Pharmaceuticals, Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, and PLoS One.