Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, scientist

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 June 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu is Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience at University College London and President of Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.

She has devoted her career to harnessing the potential of nanoparticles – which are less than a thousandth of the width of a human hair - to take medicines to hard-to-reach areas of the body such as the back of the eye and the brain. Using nanoparticles in this way is said to increase the efficacy of medicines and reduce side effects.

Ijeoma was born in London where her parents had settled from Nigeria. At 13 she moved with her family to Nigeria where she developed an enduring love of chemistry.

In 2010 she co-founded a pharmaceutical company Nanomerics with her husband. The company is currently developing eyedrops to treat blindness and a nasal spray to target pain which she hopes will go some way to addressing the opioid crisis. Earlier this year Ijeoma was appointed a DBE in the King’s New Years Honours List.

Ijeoma lives in Cambridge with her husband Andreas.

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

DISC ONE: Chop My Money (I Don’t Care) - P-Square DISC TWO: Joromi - Sir Victor Uwaifo DISC THREE: Love to Love You Baby - Donna Summer DISC FOUR: Zombie - Fela Kuti DISC FIVE: Coat of Many Colours - Dolly Parton DISC SIX: I Have Nothing - Whitney Houston DISC SEVEN: Touch Me in The Morning - Diana Ross DISC EIGHT: I’m So Glad I’m Standing Here Today - The Crusaders with Joe Cocker

BOOK CHOICE: Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt LUXURY ITEM: A variety of seeds CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: I’m So Glad I’m Standing Here Today - The Crusaders with Joe Cocker

Transcript

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0:00.0	What is love?
0:03.0	Is it chemistry, fate or a disaster waiting to happen?
0:07.0	Sometimes you mistake other things for love.
0:10.0	Join me, Ryland, on my new podcast as I ask experts and a few familiar faces what love really means.
0:16.3	Because it turns out it's a bit more complicated than happily ever after.
0:20.7	You should think of it as the daily commitment you make to someone that you care about.
0:25.2	Ryland, how to be in love. Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.2	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:34.9	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4.
0:39.7	Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:47.1	For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC sounds.
0:54.6	Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else.
0:58.9	I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the scientist Professor Dame Ijoma Uchebu.
1:26.1	She trained as a pharmacist and has spent her career harnessing the potential of nanoparticles
1:31.1	to take medicines to hard-to-reach areas of the body, increasing efficacy and reducing side effects.
1:37.6	She's currently working on a drug that can reach the back of the eye without the need for
1:41.4	painful injections. She's also developed medicines for neurological
1:45.0	conditions that can cross the blood brain barrier, painkillers that could help ease the opioid
1:49.8	crisis, and she's finding new ways to target cancer. She was born in London to Nigerian parents.
1:56.8	Growing up in both countries led her to fall in love with what she calls the universal language of science.
2:02.9	She passed the entry exam to study pharmacy at university when she was just 16,
2:07.4	but faced challenges as she followed her academic path.
	...

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