Nidhi Maniar wins poster presentation in Lowell, MA

Nidhi, a student member of the Boston Chapter of the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers (ISPE) won the graduate level competition at the Chapter’s Annual Student Poster Contest, held in Lowell on April 17th. She was awarded a cash prize as well as a free trip to compete in ISPE’s International Student Poster Competition in Las Vegas this coming October.

Nidhi’s poster was entitled “Site-specific labeling of alcohol with deuterium and radiocarbon for metabolic studies”. Ethanol (ethyl alcohol) is metabolized by at least three metabolic pathways, which exhibit different kinetic isotope effects (KIE’s) for deuterium substitution. Additionally, the two carbon atoms of ethanol exhibit different kinetics of metabolism. Nidhi’s project concerns the potential of using site-specific labeling to evaluate the contributions of the separate pathways in vivo, using carbon-14 for rodent studies, and ultimately positron emission tomography with carbon-11 in human subjects.