Jaslene Francis

Jaslene is currently a full-time PhD student at the School of Chemical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Australia. She has extensive experience in drug binding studies which she obtained from her Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the University of Malaya, Malaysia. She is currently the recipient of the Industry Doctoral Training Centre (IDTC) scholarship from the SA government, The University of Adelaide (PhD) with an industry partnership, BioCina.

Jaslene's PhD project is on the 'Design of Ready-to-Inject Aqueous Formulations of mRNA-Lipid Nanoparticles'. In summary, perturbation of an aqueous environment and its effect on the transportation of materials by Lipid nanoparticle (LNP) is the bottleneck to understanding their interaction to support its successful transportation of mRNA. Although there was various interaction of therapeutic drugs and mRNA using LNP that have been previously studied, its stability over time has been challenging due to various exposure and condition. Therefore, understanding the interaction between mRNA-LNP and its basic excipients like water, salts, and tonicity modifiers in the aqueous environment may assist in demonstrating its potential carrier in an aqueous environment. These findings are expected to be obtained using the dynamic light scattering (DLS) technique to explain the interaction parameter between these elements and the surface of mRNA-LNP which is expected to contribute to a stable formulation at lower temperatures.