Warunee Hanpithakpong

Warunee Hanpithakpong, a pharmacologist, joined Department of Clinical Pharmacology at Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU) in 2006 as post-doctoral researcher.

During 2006-2013, Warunee worked as a team leader to conduct the routine analysis for qualification of drugs level in biological fluid using the liquid chromatography couple with mass spectrometry (LC/MS). She has extensive experience in bioanalysis method development and validation for drugs used in tropical diseases by LC-MS/MS. These quantification assay methods developed are fully validated according to US-food and drug administration and European Agency Medicine guidelines and certified with ISO15189.

Her research focus on developing simple and sensitive bioanalysis methodologies of drugs used in tropical diseases. These methodologies are not only the simple sample preparation technique but also included the feasible process of blood or plasma collection to quantify the drug level. This sample collection technique would be applied to other purposes in molecular biology aspects; to find the reliable markers for diagnostics, treatment response and precision medicine.

Her research focus also on pharmacology field in drug discovery and system pharmacology. She and her collaborators is now trying to synthesize and explore the mechanism of action of the novel biosimilar compounds that could be able to combat the antimicrobial resistance or use it as cargo to the target organelle. She is now trying to set up the system to explore the host-pathogen and drug relationship. This would be enabled us to better understand the drug action and disease pathology.