Transport and Biotransport Phenomena
Professor Daniel Lepek carries out many research and educational projects on transport and biotransport phenomena. Many of these projects are focused on novel aspects of drug delivery. Dr. Lepek and his students frequently use COMSOL Multiphysics as a simulation tool to perform computational transport and biotransport simulations.
Retro-Convection Enhanced Drug Delivery
With his graduate student Michael Cerro, Dr. Lepek has been investing the transport phenomena aspects of retro-convection enhanced drug delivery (R-CED), a relatively new technique employed to delivery drugs across the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) to central nervous system (CNS) malignant tumors. In R-CED, the interstitial fluid is extracted, reducing tumor pressure, and increasing the pressure gradient across the blood brain barrier.
Starting with the conservation of mass equation,
models for drug delivery have been developed for different geometric membrane systems:
cylindrical
spherical
In addition, pharmacokinetic analysis was performed studying the area under the curve (AUC) profiles for these systems.
This research work by Michael Cerro was presented at and published in the proceedings of the 2011 AIChE Annual Meeting.
Students and collaborators who are interested in working with Dr. Lepek on projects relating to transport phenomena and biotransport phenomena should contact Dr. Lepek directly.