Veronica Piedra on breaking barriers in drug delivery for cancer treatment

Drug development Interviews

During the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) PharmSci 360 2025 conference, Bioanalysis Zone caught up with industry experts across numerous disciplines to discuss their involvement with AAPS and their research. In this interview, we spoke to Veronica Piedra about her research into macropinocytosis as a drug delivery strategy in cancer treatment.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this interview are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bioanalysis Zone or Taylor & Francis Group.

Interview questions:

  1. For those who are unfamiliar, could you start by explaining what macropinocytosis is?
  2. Multidrug resistance is a major clinical challenge in anticancer therapeutics. Can you explain how your macropinocytosis approach might overcome resistance mechanisms that traditional drug delivery methods can’t address?
  3. Could you explain how macropinocytosis-mediated delivery compares to other drug delivery strategies like nanoparticles or antibody-drug conjugates in terms of selectivity and efficiency?
  4. If you could solve one technical challenge to move this research forward, what would it be and why?
  5. What advice would you give to young researchers entering this field about the most important research directions or skills to develop?

 

Meet the speaker

Veronica Piedra
Graduate Assistant
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences/University of Arkansas at Little Rock (AR, USA)

Veronica Piedra is a biologist from Ecuador currently pursuing her PhD in Bioinformatics in the joint graduate program between the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR) and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). She is a Graduate Assistant in Dr Amit K Tiwari’s Cancer Therapeutics Laboratory where she is being trained in molecular biology, pharmacology and computational analysis to investigate and design innovative approaches to overcome drug resistance in aggressive cancers through non apoptotic methods. Her dissertation research focuses on using novel macropinocytosis inducers to enhance the intracellular delivery of therapeutic small and macro molecules into cancer cells.

About AAPS

American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) is a non-profit association of more than 7000 scientists and professionals employed in academia, industry, regulatory and other research related to the pharmaceutical sciences worldwide. Its mission is to advance the capacity of pharmaceutical scientists to develop products and therapies that improve global health, which members pursue through four peer-reviewed journals and a variety of events in person and online.

AAPS PharmSci 360 delivers research from across the pharmaceutical continuum, from discovery to delivery, and all stages in between. Thousands of scientists from across the globe converge to discuss cutting-edge breakthroughs, technologies, and techniques in symposia and poster presentations at this science-first event. https://www.aaps.org/pharmsci360.