Rate My Professor Shakila Rizwan

Dr. Shakila Rizwan is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Pharmacy at the University of Otago. She holds a Bachelor of Pharmacy (BPharm) and a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from the University of Otago. Her primary research interests center on the delivery of pharmaceuticals to the brain, with a focus on developing and evaluating novel formulations—physicochemically and biologically—for targeted delivery of peptides and proteins using self-assembled liquid crystalline nanoparticles, including cubosomes and hexosomes. Rizwan investigates factors influencing drug permeability and transport across healthy and diseased blood-brain barriers, particularly in epilepsy models. She develops and validates blood-brain barrier models using zebrafish and conducts in vivo evaluations of formulations in both rodent and zebrafish systems. Previously affiliated with the Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology at the University of Otago, her work has evolved to emphasize pharmaceutical sciences within the School of Pharmacy, contributing to advancements in nose-to-brain drug delivery strategies for neurological disorders such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease.

Rizwan has secured major research funding, including the Health Research Council of New Zealand Emerging Researcher First Grant in 2015 valued at NZ$137,636 for 'The nose knows the way: An intranasal approach to treat drug-resistant epilepsy,' and a NZ$12,000 grant from the Neurological Foundation in 2016 for a novel intranasal mucoadhesive carrier to deliver anticonvulsant drugs. In 2015, she was highlighted as one of the 'research leaders of tomorrow' for her innovative platform technology targeting epileptic seizures. Key publications include 'Differential expressions of inflammatory, dentinogenic, regulatory, proliferative and stemness genes in non-carious and carious human dental pulp tissues: An ex vivo proof-of-concept study' (Arora et al., International Endodontic Journal, 2026), 'Characterising a new sheep model of Parkinson's disease using unilateral intracerebral injection of 6-hydroxydopamine into the substantia nigra' (Banstola et al., European Journal of Neuroscience, 2025), 'Comparison of cubosomes and hexosomes for the delivery of phenytoin to the brain' (Mohammad et al., 2022), 'Cubosomes enhance drug permeability across the blood-brain barrier in zebrafish' (Azhari et al., 2021), and 'Preparation of phytantriol cubosomes by solvent precursor method' (Rizwan et al., European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics, 2011). In August 2024, she presented 'Development of bioactive lipid nanoparticles to dampen neuroinflammation' at the Asia Pacific Delivery Science Conference in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She has supervised multiple doctoral theses on related topics.