Our nanomedicine journey from concept to clinic.
- Mon 1st Dec 2025
- 19:30-21:00
- Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Churchill College, Storey's Way, Cambridge, CB3 0DS and Zoom
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Drug development is expensive and risky, with a 0.02% chance of success from concept to the market and with costs of about one billion US dollars. Inadequate efficacy is a major reason for failure and low concentrations of drug at the site of disease contribute to poor effectiveness.
An estimated half of patients with chronic conditions do not take their medicines as prescribed due to the fear of side effects. Side effects may be minimised if more drug is channelled away from healthy tissue and towards diseased tissue.
The talk will explore some solutions to the efficacy and side effects issues.
Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu DBE FMedSci HonFRSC, Wolfson College, Cambridge; UCL School of Pharmacy, London; Nanomerics Ltd, London.
Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, DBE, FMedSci is President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UCL’s Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience, a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a governor on the Wellcome board (one of the largest biomedical sciences research charities in the world), a member of the Academy of Medical Sciences Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Council, as well as Chief Scientific Officer of Nanomerics Ltd, a company she co-founded.
Uchegbu is an inventor. Her company, Nanomerics Ltd. is a clinical stage biotech company, developing medicines that address sight-threatening illnesses. Nanomerics has also out-licensed medicines developed in her laboratory to a US pharmaceutical company. Technologies developed in Uchegbu’s laboratory have won prizes from the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society. Nanomerics Ltd. won the King’s Award for Enterprise 2024 in the Innovation category. The King’s Award for Enterprise is the most UK’s most prestigious business award. Uchegbu’s work has been featured in BBC Radio 4 programmes such as Desert Island Discs and The Life Scientific as well as in The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.
Uchegbu has served as Chair of the Academy of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Scientific Secretary of the Controlled Release Society and she is the immediate past UCL Provost’s Envoy for Race Equality, a role in which she led on race equality work at UCL. Her work led to the removal of the names of prominent eugenicists from all of UCL’s buildings in 2020. Uchegbu has also presented to the UK House of Commons on the educational racial disparities that lead to a lack of ethnic minority representation in scientific research.
Uchegbu’s popular science book– Chain Reaction – will be published by Hodder and Stoughton.
Uchegbu is listed in Bloomsbury Publishing’s Who’s Who, and was made Dame Commander of the British Empire (DBE) in the King’s New Years Honours 2025.
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