Amphiphilic cyclodextrins as enabling excipients for drug delivery and for decades of scientific collaboration: Tribute to a distinguished scientist, French representative and friend – A historical perspective

As a result of the long term collaboration and friendship between Prof. Dominique Duchene and Prof. Atilla Hıncal, several co-supervised Ph.D. theses were conducted in the frame of a co-tutelle PhD programme within the period of 2000–2007, based on the joint Ph.D. agreement between the Hacettepe University in Ankara, Turkey, and the Universite Paris XI in Chatenây-Malabry, France. The first of these scientific collaborations was based on the synthesis, characterization and evaluation of amphiphilic cyclodextrins as nanoparticulate material for the delivery of drugs with bioavailability problems, such as poor solubility, poor stability and side effects. This direct collaboration between Prof. Dominique Duchene and Prof. Atilla Hıncal was further followed on by different research teams from both universities, collaborating on brain delivery and ocular drug delivery with different polymeric nanoparticles resulting in two more Ph.D. theses and several publications. This paper is a historical perspective of this fruitful collaboration and acknowledges the support and supervision of the honorable Prof. Dominique Duchene in this scientific union between two countries and two universities.