Lee Yong is a professor of pharmaceutics at UWA. She has more than 25 years of research experience in designing and evaluating innovative drug delivery systems. She completed a Bachelor of Science with first class honours in pharmacy at the National University of Singapore, and a PhD in the pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Manchester. She has worked as an academic at the National Universitiy of Singapore for 15 years before moving to UWA in 2005 to help design and start the Master of Pharmacy program.   

Lee Yong teaches pharmaceutics in the MPharm program at UWA. She is the Graduate Research Coordinator for postgraduate students at the School of Allied Health, and the coordinator of the UWA-Zhejiang University pharmacy student exchange program.

Lee Yong is Unit Co-ordinator for the following courses:

PHCY8610 Physical Pharmacy and Biopharmaceutics

PHCY5611 Medicinal Product Formulation

PHCY5614 Pharmacy Research Project

PHCY0002 UWA-ZJU Pharmacy Research Project

Lee Yong heads the Laboratory for Drug Delivery, which engages in multi-disciplinary research to design, fabricate, evaluate and translate innovative delivery platforms to optimise drug delivery and therapeutic outcomes for patients. 

Lee Yong has a strong focus to transform the current practice of medicinal product development for young children. She collaborates with medical practitioners and clinical pharmacists to identify and overcome constraints that prevent medicines from working effectively in the paediatric population. Lee Yong is one of only a handful of academics globally who has proven capacity to take a problematic drug from formulation to preclinical evaluation and finally to taste acceptance and pharmacokinetic trials in children. Her team has a record of developing successful drug delivery platforms for children. A novel palatable chocolate-based formulation for bitter drugs is the subject of a patent published in 2018, and 2 successful prototype products that have attracted strong industry interest. Other age-appropriate taste-masked platforms are currently being developed. 

Lee Yong's team also innovates taste-masked medicinal products for the marine aquaculture industry. They have developed several unique platforms that are effective at taste masking a bitter drug, are adequately stable in sea water for administration to the fish as feeds, yet are digestible in the fish gut. The platforms have potential for scale up production and transferability to other animal species.

A third area of focus is the innovation of stable protein scaffolds for the treatment of chronic tympanic membrane perforation. The team has successfully stabilized a highly labile endogenous protein for processing into stable medicinal products that have potential to offer a more accessible alternative to surgical treatment of chronic tympanic membrane perforations. 

Lee Yong also has an international reputation in nanotechnology-enabled medicinal product innovation, and continues to maintain an interest in this research through international collaborations. She also works with WA hospitals to provide safe delivery of extemporaneously compounded medicines to patients.

Lee Yong works with industry and other stake holders, including consumers, to ensure strong translatability of her research. Please contact Lee Yong or the UWA Office of Research for PhD and licensing opportunities.

Lee Yong has received over $4.5 million in research support from a wide range of sources, including the NHMRC, ARC, Cancer Council, WA Department of Health, Telethon-Perth Children's Hospital, Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation, ANZ College of Anaesthetists, UWA Pathfinder, Singapore Biomedical Research Council, Singapore DSO, NUS Academic Fund, and the pharmaceutical industry in Australia and other countries.