Dr Meenu Wadhwa

As section leader for Cytokines and Growth Factors, Meenu Wadhwa is responsible for a number of diverse projects in this field. These include preparation of World Health Organisation (WHO) International Standards and pharmacopoeial standards for cytokines, growth factors and related molecules, continuous development of improved and/or novel assays for these molecules and their implementation in standardization, product testing and research activities. As NIBSC is an Official Medicines Control laboratory in Europe, the section participates in European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and Healthcare (EDQM) coordinated testing scheme for post marketing surveillance of cytokines and growth factors and related molecules. Investigations of medicines associated with adverse effects or reactions along with those that are counterfeit or unlicensed and seized are also undertaken.

Meenu’s main research interests include the biology of cytokines and their potential involvement in pathogenesis of diseases, development and application of novel methods including cell-based in vitro assays, assessing and understanding the unwanted immunogenicity of biotherapeutics, harmonizing antibody assays for immunogenicity assessment, developing tests for assessing safety and/or predicting adverse effects of biological medicines and evaluation of biosimilar medicines.

Collaborations with international partnersincluding the US and European Pharmacopoeias, control laboratories, various research groups, clinicians and biotechnology companies is important to the success of the work program. This work has resulted in a number of important publications in scientific journals and presentations at international scientific conferences and contribution to various guidelines at WHO and the European Medicines Agency (EMA).