Assistant Professor Deirdre D'Arcy

Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology

Asst. Prof. Deirdre D’Arcy Ph.D., M.P.S.I.
Assistant Professor
Email: ddarcy@tcd.ie
Phone: +353-1-896-2785
Location: Panoz Institute, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.

Year 4 Co-ordinator, Module Coordinator, Faculty of Health Sciences Irish Language Committee Representative.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Deirdre D’Arcy is a registered pharmacist with post graduate diplomas in Clinical Pharmacy (2002) and Quality Improvement (2004), and a PhD in Pharmaceutical Technology (2007). While working as a hospital pharmacist and undertaking her diploma in clinical pharmacy, she developed an interest in clinical pharmacokinetics and drug delivery. Her subsequent PhD involved use of mathematical modelling to simulate fluid flow, dissolution and drug release. This combination of pharmaceutical technology and clinical expertise enables a range of exciting patient-focussed research questions to be explored. She was appointed as a lecturer in Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Technology in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences in TCD in October 2005.

Following this she continued to focus her research on simulation of dissolution conditions, in particular in low velocity hydrodynamic environments, and also on simulation of dissolution and drug release from particulate systems in collaboration with the School of Engineering in TCD. Concurrently, she merged her knowledge of modelling and simulation with her clinical background, and became lead PI of the clinical pharmacokinetics research group. The research of this group has focussed to date on pharmacokinetics of antimicrobials in specific patient groups such as the critically ill, haematology patients and cystic fibrosis patients, with collaborations in Tallaght Hospital and St. Vincent’s University Hospital. Further recent dissolution research involves establishing clinically relevant dissolution conditions and further developing dissolution simulation models. Other research interests include application of pharmacokinetic principles to everyday clinical situations, such as drug interactions on smoking cessation and drug use in breast feeding.