Natpapat Kaewkhao

Senior Scientist Natpapat Kaewkhao has worked as a bioanalytical analyst In MORU’s Department of Clinical Pharmacology since 2010. In 2018, she was awarded her PhD from Faculty of Tropical Medicine, Mahidol University.

From 2010-2014, Natpapat worked as a bioanalytical analyst in the routine analysis team in qualification of drugs level in human fluids using the liquid chromatography couple with mass spectrometry (LC/MS).  One of her main responsibilities was to assist and support method development for drugs quantification in dried blood samples. As a bioanalytical analyst, she has extensive experience in analytical method development and validation of drugs used to treat Tropical Diseases.

Natpapat is now responsible for developing fast and simple extraction techniques, high throughput and sensitive bioanalysis methods using LC/MS to quantify small to medium size drug molecules for medical research aimed for clinical applications. The methods go through a validation process to confirm the ruggedness and robustness before its implement to routine analysis. These developed quantification assays are fully validated according to US-food and drug administration and European Medicine Agency guidelines and certified with ISO15189. She is also supervising students doing their research projects in the pharmacology laboratory and collaborating in other research’s projects.

Since starting at MORU, Natpapat has completed many method development and validation projects for drug measurement using mass spectrometry. These methods have been applied to various clinical studies, e.g. chloroquine in plasma/whole blood/dried blood spot samples, amodiaquine in plasma/dried blood spot samples, ivermectin in plasma/whole blood, sofosbuvir in plasma, daclatasvir in plasma, velpatasvir in plasma, and hydroxychloroquine in dried blood spot samples etc. These methods aim to support studies that analyses the samples for drug measurements in our laboratory Clinical Pharmacology, MORU.

Natpapat is currently working on developing a method to quantify a small unstable compound, to find a simple technique to maintain the integrity of the compound to be measured. This would enable the method to be applied in an infectious disease clinical study that need to measure very low concentrations.

Selected for the Fellowships program at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) under the Australia Awards in 2018 at the Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin and The University of Melbourne, Natpapat was also selected to participate in the 18^th Annual Meeting of the STS forum (Japan) that was held online in 2021