"Benefitting people and the world through science has been the focus of my career," says Niveen M Khashab, an Assistant Professor of Chemical Sciences and Environmental Sciences and Engineering.

Dr. Khashab is the Principal Investigator in a team of four PhD students and three postdoctoral researchers at the KAUST Controlled, Release and Delivery (CRD) Laboratory. The CRD Lab is based within KAUST Core Labs and was custom built for Dr Khashab's research specifications.

"I always have been interested in organic synthesis in general but I was more interested in the application of it in everyday life."

Currently Dr. Khashab and her group are researching various controlled delivery topics that apply to environment, industry and medicine/ pharmacy.

These include palladium loaded nanodevices for catalyzed water purification (environmental), self-healing materials and polymeric nanocomposites (industrial), and biocompatible targeted nanosystems that can be used for drug delivery and/ or imaging applications in nanomedicine (medical).

"In pharmacy, nano-scale delivery focuses on the delivery of drugs on a cellular level, while in industry it has various applications such as the self-healing materials of a pipe and environmentally, the concept can be used in water purification and contaminant removal."

One of the major catalysts behind Dr. Khashab's passion for controlled delivery is breast cancer. She believes the use of surgery will decrease in treating disease as the field of nano-chemistry advances.

"A lot of women are ignorant of just how lethal this sickness can be – it can really spread to the whole body really quickly. Cells are micro in size, so if you need to destroy or heal a cell, it could be done on a nano-scale through the controlled delivery of cancer treatment drugs," said Dr. Khashab.

Cancer treatment such as chemotherapy kills cells that divide rapidly. Because of this epithelial cells are among the first to go, and since hair and stomach lining are epithelial, alopecia (hair loss), sickness and diarrhea are all side effects of the treatment. The use of controlled delivery can provide a solution for all these unwelcomed side effects.

"Controlled delivery gives us cell-specific targeting and complete control over the release of the drug, thus killing just the cancer cells and not normal tissue," explains Dr. Khashab.

"There are enough drugs out there that kill cancer cells effectively, however these target all of the body's cells and patients have to suffer because of it."

A 2002 undergraduate at the American University of Beirut, and Ph.D graduate of the University of Florida¬, Dr. Khashab majored in Organic Chemistry and minored in Medical Chemistry.

She also studied as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) for two years followed by Northwestern University in Chicago for 18 months before joining KAUST in June 2009.

Further Information

• KAUST Controlled, Release and Delivery Laboratory
• Dr. Nivine Khashab biography