Associate Professor
Duquesne University
Dr. Devika S Manickam, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutics in the School of Pharmacy at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA). Her research expertise is focused on the development of carriers—both synthetic (lipid- and polymer-based) as well as natural nanocarriers (cell-derived extracellular vesicles) for the delivery of biologics such as nucleic acids and proteins. She received her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Wayne State University (Detroit, MI), completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (Omaha, NE) and worked as a Research Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (NC). She started her independent laboratory in 2016 at Duquesne University focused on the development of carriers for the delivery of biologics to treat CNS disorders. Check her research website for more information: https://manickamlab.wordpress.com/ Her research program has taken an unique approach for developing stroke therapies by targeting the delivery of biologics to the endothelial cells lining the blood-brain barrier (BBB) instead of crossing the BBB as the endothelial cells are key players in the disease pathology. Her lab is also developing lipid nanoparticles for the delivery of siRNA to neural and glial cells as a novel approach for the treatment of chronic pain.