Hannah Batchelor is a Formulations Research Fellow funded by the Medicines for Children Network to support high quality clinical research into medicines for children and young people, ensuring that medicines are both safe and effective.
Her work will focus on the design and manipulation of medicines to create age appropriate drug formulations to maximise clinical efficacy in paediatric patients.
Her research interests lie in the optimisation of drug formulations to maximise their biopharmaceutical performance.
Hannah Batchelor graduated from a combined honours degree in Pharmacology and Chemistry at the University of Sheffield in 1996. She went on to work as a formulation scientist at Reckitt and Colman (now Reckitt Benckiser) primarily working on over the counter (OTC) medicines (Gaviscon and Gaviscon Advance).
In 2000 she was awarded her PhD in Drug Delivery from the University of London for a research project that explored the use of alginates in coating and protecting the oesophagus from gastric reflux.
She took up a lectureship in Pharmaceutics at Aston University immediately following her PhD where her research efforts focussed on targeted drug delivery systems and gastro-retentive therapies.
In 2008 she joined AstraZeneca as a senior scientist in biopharmaceutics where she worked on several drugs in development and lead the paediatric biopharmaceutics research group.
In 2011 she joined the R&D team at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust as a Research Portfolio Manager to facilitate NHS lead researchers as well as develop collaborations with regional Universities.
Hannah Batchelor is interested in supervising research projects in the following areas:
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The use of scientific principles to design or manipulate medicines for paediatric use
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Generation of understanding of paediatric physiology and biopharmaceutics to ensure clinical efficacy is maximised
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Development of in silico tools to predict drug performance in paediatric populations
If you are interesting in studying any of these subject areas please contact Hannah on the contact details above, or for any general doctoral research enquiries, please email: dr@contacts.bham.ac.uk or call +44 (0)121 414 5005.
For a full list of available Doctoral Research opportunities, please visit our Doctoral Research programme listings
The main research themes are:
Scientific understanding of the impact of manipulation of existing medicines for use in children
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Including understanding and implications of manipulations of medicines with food and/or drink
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Data driven stability/shelf-life of manipulated medicines
Generation of understanding of paediatric biopharmaceutics to best design medicines for children
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Including in vivo relevant dissolution testing
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In vivo relevant drug release/diffusion from formulations and manipulated medicines
Demonstrate the value of in silico modelling to predict the performance of medicines in children to minimise testing in patients where possible
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Including a review of PK and bridging studies in paediatric populations
Evaluation of the barriers to administration of paediatric medicines
Khan S, Batchelor H K, Hanson P, Perrie Y, Mohammed A R (2011) Physicochemical characterisation, drug polymer dissolution and in vitro evaluation of Phenacetin and Phenylbutazone solid dispersions with polyethylene glycol 8000. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences 100(10):4281-4294.
Tytgat G N, McColl K, Tack J, Holtmann G, Hunt R, Malfertheiner P, Hungin A P S, Batchelor H K (2008) New algorithm for the treatment of gastro-oesophageal reflux disease. Alimetary Pharamcology and Therapeutics 27:249-256
Clark S, Cross L M, Smith A M, Court P, Vipond J, Nadian A, Hewinson R G, Batchelor H K, Perrie Y, Williams A, Aldwell F E, Chambers M A (2008) Assessment of different formulations of oral Mycobacterium bovis Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine in rodent models for immunogenicity and protection against aerosol challenge with M Bovis. Vaccine. 26(46): 5791-7
Zhang L, Russell D G R, Conway B R, Batchelor H K (2008), Strategies and therapeutic opportunities for the delivery of drugs to the esophagus. Critical Reviews in Therapeutic Drug Carrier Systems 25(3):259-304
Oladiran G S, Batchelor H K (2007) Determination of ibuprofen solubility in wax: a comparison of microscopic, thermal and release rate techniques. European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics 67(1):106-111
Gramaglia D, Conway B R, Kett V L, Malcolm R K, Batchelor H K (2005) High speed DSC (hyper-DSC) as a tool to measure the solubility of a drug within a solid or semi-solid matrix. International Journal of Pharmaceutics 301(1-2):1-5
Esnaashari S, Javadzadeh Y, Batchelor H K, Conway B R (2005) The use of microviscometry to study polymer dissolution from solid dispersion drug delivery systems. International Journal of Pharmaceutics 292(1-2):227-230
Batchelor H K (2005) Bioadhesive dosage forms for esophageal drug delivery. Pharmaceutical Research 22(2):175-181