Dr. Nitesh Kunda is an Assistant Professor in Industrial Pharmacy and Pharmaceutics in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences within the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at St. John’s University, NY. Prior to joining St. John’s, Dr. Kunda was a post-doctoral fellow at the College of Pharmacy, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, with a research focus in aerosol drug and vaccine delivery. Dr. Kunda holds a Ph.D. in Formulation and Drug Delivery from the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, United Kingdom. Dr. Kunda’s dissertation focused on developing a novel pneumococcal vaccine that can be inhaled as a dry powder. Dr. Kunda holds a Master’s in Drug Delivery from the London School of Pharmacy, London, UK and a Bachelor’s (2009) in Pharmacy (Honors) from Birla Institute of Technology & Science-Pilani (BITS-Pilani), India.
Dr. Kunda’s current research interests include the use of nanotechnology in developing therapeutics against respiratory diseases (lung infections and cancer), targeted drug delivery, and drug and vaccine formulation for pulmonary delivery. Dr. Kunda’s laboratory specializes in developing dry powder biologics that do not require cold-chain for storage and transport thereby decreasing the cost of biologics-based products significantly.
Dr. Kunda has numerous high-impact peer-reviewed research publications covering a wide variety of topics including formulation, drug delivery, stabilization and inhaled delivery of vaccines, and health effects due to common environmental toxicants. Dr. Kunda is an active member of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS, since 2012) and many other professional organizations. Further, Dr. Kunda is an editorial board member of PLoS One, Frontiers in Drug Delivery, Frontiers in Immunology, and a reviewer for many high-impact journals such as International Journal of Pharmaceutics, Pharmaceutics, Pharmaceuticals, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Toxicology in vitro, Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, and PLoS One.
