“Research into novel pharmaceuticals with Dr Rafiq Karaman’’
Introducing Dr. Rafik Karaman:
Professor Rafik Karaman is currently a distinguished professor of pharmaceutical sciences, College of Pharmacy, Al-Quds University, Jerusalem, Palestine and adjunct professor at Basilicata University, Italy. He received his Ph.D. in Pharmacy from the Hebrew University. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Toledo and University of California (USA) for several years where he worked with Professor T.C. Bruice in the bioorganic chemistry and drug discovery fields.
Professor Karaman is broadly interested in Drug Discovery, Drug Design, Computational Methods, DFT Calculations, Synthesis of Organic Compounds, Reactions Mechanisms and in the design and synthesis of prodrug systems to be used for the delivery of certain drugs that have poor water solubility or/and have low bioavailability as well as synthesis of prodrugs for masking the bitter sensation of commonly used drugs.
Professor Karaman has more than 180 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters;140 of them were published in the recent 10 years. He is currently an editor and an editorial board member of 50 international journals in the areas of pharmaceutical sciences. In 2013, he was the second in ResearchGate (RG, a research site including 16 million scientists around the world).
Research engaged:
During the past few years Pharmacare has taken a number of steps towards developing a variety of researches for improving their marketed drugs as well as for invoking new drugs. Among these scientific researches are:
- Designing and synthesizing prodrugs for a number of bitter antibacterial agents. The synthesized prodrugs have shown NO bitter sensation. Invitro kinetics studies revealed that upon their exposure to a medium mimicking that of the human stomach, a complete conversion of the prodrug to its parent drug and a non toxic moiety. Toxicity and bio availability studies on animals are being researched as a collaboration work with the college of pharmacy at Petra University (Jordan).
- To reduce the cost of medicines marketed to the public, Pharmacare has started the establishment of a site for the production of active ingredients which are incorporated in its marketed medicines and are currently imported in high prices. This step has the potential to minimize the cost of such ingredients and consequently may lead to low prices of the finished products (medicines) when introduced to the general public.