Shreya Kapila

I am a final year PhD candidate in Chemical Engineering at Penn State in Dr. Andrew Zydney's lab, specializing in downstream processing, focusing on sterile filtration of nanoemulsion-based drug and vaccine systems. My work combines membrane characterization and process optimization to understand fouling mechanisms and improve filtration performance.

Pharmaceutical manufacturing is a complex, multi-step process where products must be carefully purified before being administered to patients. As a final safety step, sterile filtration (typically using 0.2 µm filters, as recommended by FDA regulatory guidelines) ensures that injectable drugs and vaccines are free from contaminants or large aggregates. However, real formulations contain a range of particle sizes (20-200 nm), and larger particles can rapidly clog filters, leading to product loss, reduced throughput, and increased manufacturing costs.

In my research, I study these challenges in nanoemulsions, an emerging class of drug delivery systems being developed as next-generation modalities for vaccines and therapeutics. Similar to lipid nanoparticle systems used in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, these formulations present unique filtration challenges due to their composition and size distribution (20-200 nm).

By developing improved prefiltration strategies and understanding excipient–membrane interactions, I have achieved ~3-fold higher filtration capacity and ~96% product recovery. At the manufacturing scale, such improvements can translate into substantial cost savings by reducing filter consumption, minimizing product loss, and improving overall process efficiency. My work has resulted in multiple publications in leading journals, including Journal of Membrane Science, Journal of Colloids and Interfaces, and Biotechnology Progress.