Lewis Stevens, PhD
Associate Professor
Introduction
Dr. Stevens is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Experimental Therapeutics, and Pharmaceutics Program Director. Dr. Stevens earned his Ph.D. in physical chemistry with an emphasis on solids and optical spectroscopy from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Following his graduate studies, Dr. Stevens joined the Dynamic Experimentation group at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow. At LANL he studied solid-state phase stability and mechanics under high pressure through combining diamond-anvil cell compression with synchrotron XRD investigation. After LANL, he joined AgSource Laboratories as the Manager of Technology and Development. Here he worked to establish quality operations and advance new analytical methods in all testing laboratories throughout the United States. Dr. Stevens then moved to the College of Pharmacy at the University of Iowa as an Assistant Professor and established his Applied Materials Laboratory.
Current Positions
- Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Experimental Therapeutics
- Pharmaceutics Program Director
Research Interests
- Mechanotherapeutics for brain diseases. Research here is focused on the development and use of synthetic, brain mechanomimetics to detail how the adaptive response by neurons/glia in vitro to changing mechanical cues affects amyloid processing, inflammation, and/or oxidative stress. Targeting mechanobiochemical pathways is the basis for a novel class of “mechanotherapeutics” currently being investigated for arthritis, fibrosis, and cancer, and here our work is extending their potential as novel treatments for brain diseases.
- The Applied Material Laboratory (AML), led by Dr. Stevens, blends fundamental concepts in physical pharmacy, materials science, and cell/molecular biology with sophisticated spectroscopic methods to create an interdisciplinary research environment with the core mission of “Better Medicines by Material Design”. Specific interests focus on improved treatments for brain-related disorders, and three ongoing research areas are shown here.
- Functional, multi-target, oral solids. This research area is focused on how to predictably improve the processability and performance of oral solids by developing a “roadmap” for rational solid-form discovery of new pharmaceutical co-crystals, co-amorphous forms, polymorphs, and salts. Moreover, for many neurodegenerative disorders, treatment strategies directed against a single target have met with very limited success, and here, we are working to develop a series of multi-target, drug-drug co-crystals as a novel class of combination therapy.
- Mechanical design in drug delivery. Classical particle optimization strategies to improve drug delivery modify size, charge and/or surface chemistry; however, tuning particle mechanics has emerged as a novel approach to improve delivery performance. Our research in this area is focused on developing new tools to characterize nanomechanics, and new strategies to expand the mechanical design space for novel drug delivery vectors with interests in improving delivery across the blood-brain barrier.
Selected Publications
- Young, B. A. & Stevens, L. L. (2022). Discriminating the Interaction Anisotropy in Polymorphs Using Powder Brillouin Light Scattering. JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES 111 (2) 440-449. DOI: 10.1016/j.xphs.2021.09.010.
- Bahl, D., Young, B. A. & Stevens, L. L. (2021). Elastic anisotropy of mechanically responsive molecular solids. CRYSTENGCOMM 23 (34) 5805-5814. DOI: 10.1039/d1ce00542a.
- Bell, K. J., Lansakara, T. I., Crawford, R., Monroe, T. B., Tivanski, A. V., Salem, A. K. & Stevens, L. L. (2021). Mechanical cues protect against silica nanoparticle exposure in SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma. TOXICOLOGY IN VITRO 70. DOI: 10.1016/j.tiv.2020.105031.
- Dattelbaum, D. M., Emmons, E. D., Covington, A., Stevens, L. L., Velisavljevic, N. & Branch, B. A. (2020). High-pressure X-ray diffraction and vibrational spectroscopy of polyethylene: Evidence for a structural phase transition. Vibrational Spectroscopy 111 103173.
- Singaraju, A. B., Bahl, D., Wang, C., Swenson, D. C., Sun, C. C. & Stevens, L. L. (2020). Molecular Interpretation of the Compaction Performance and Mechanical Properties of Caffeine Cocrystals: A Polymorphic Study. MOLECULAR PHARMACEUTICS 17 (1) 21-31. DOI: 10.1021/acs.molpharmaceut.9b00377.
- Kruger, T. M., Bell, K. J., Lansakara, Thiranjeewa, I, Tivanski, Alexei, V, Doorn, J. A. & Stevens, L. L. (2020). A Soft Mechanical Phenotype of SH-SY5Y Neuroblastoma and Primary Human Neurons Is Resilient to Oligomeric A beta(1-42) Injury. ACS CHEMICAL NEUROSCIENCE 11 (6) 840-850. DOI: 10.1021/acschemneuro.9b00401.
- Singaraju, A. B., Bahl, D. & Stevens, L. L. (2019). Brillouin Light Scattering: Development of a Near Century-Old Technique for Characterizing the Mechanical Properties of Materials. AAPS PharmSciTech 20 (3). DOI: 10.1208/s12249-019-1311-5.
- Kruger, T. M., Bell, K. J., Lansakara, T. I., Tivanski, A. V., Doorn, J. A. & Stevens, L. L. (2019). Reduced Extracellular Matrix Stiffness Prompts SH-SY5Y Cell Softening and Actin Turnover To Selectively Increase A beta(1-42) Endocytosis. ACS Chemical Neuroscience 10 (3) 1284-1293. DOI: 10.1021/acschemneuro.8b00366.
- Young, B. A., Bahl, D. & Stevens, L. L. (2019). Understanding the Tabletability Differences between Indomethacin Polymorphs Using Powder Brillouin Light Scattering. Pharmaceutical Research 36. DOI: 10.1007/s11095-019-2681-9.
- Joshi, T. V., Singaraju, A. B., Shah, H. S., Morris, K. R., Stevens, L. L. & Haware, R. V. (2018). Structure-Mechanics and Compressibility Profile Study of Flufenamic Acid:Nicotinamide Cocrystal. Crystal Growth and Design 18 (10) 5853-5865. DOI: 10.1021/acs.cgd.8b00534.