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Recent Developments in Zwitterionic Materials and Drug Delivery Systems
November 1 @ 11:00 am - 12:00 pm EDT
Special Seminar
Date: Friday November 1, 2024
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm
Location: Donnelly Centre, 160 College Street, 2nd Floor, Red Seminar Room
Host: Molly Shoichet
Speaker: Dr. Shaoyi Jiang, PhD Cornell University
“Recent Developments in Zwitterionic Materials and Drug Delivery Systems”
Highly biocompatible zwitterionic materials have been applied to implants, medical devices, human induced pluripotent stem cell cultures, drug delivery carriers, and marine coatings. I will give a brief update on recent developments in zwitterionic materials, particularly how zwitterionic materials are used to solve three major problems faced by lipid nanoparticles for mRNA delivery: (a) reactogenicity and immunogenicity; (b) low efficacy, and (c) lack of organ-targeting (e.g., lymph nodes, the spleen, and bone marrow) and cell-targeting (e.g., macrophages and NK cells) for cancer immunotherapy, autoimmune disease vaccine and genome editing applications. While LNPs are biomimetic, endogenous virus-like vesicles (VLVs), derived from native components within the human body, are an alternative approach. We have demonstrated the success of VLVs in transporting mRNA across the blood-brain barrier into neurons, delivering hydrophobic small molecule drugs directly into triple-negative breast cancer cells and enhancing T cell activation for cancer vaccines. Collectively, these advances highlight the transformative potential of LNP and VLV-based therapies in revolutionizing drug delivery and treatment modalities for complex diseases.
Biography
Shaoyi Jiang joined the Meinig School of Biomedical Engineering at Cornell as the Robert Langer ’70 Family and Friends Professor in June 2020. Before Cornell, he was the Boeing-Roundhill Professor of Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering and an adjunct professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. He received his Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University in 1993. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of
California, Berkeley between 1993 and 1994 and a research fellow at California Institute of Technology between 1994 and 1996 both in chemistry. He is currently a member of the National Academy of Inventors, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), an executive editor for Langmuir, and an associate editor for Science Advances. He received the Braskem Award for Excellence in Materials Engineering and Science, AIChE (2017). His research focuses on biomaterials and drug delivery, particularly highly biocompatible zwitterionic materials and low- immunogenic / targeted drug delivery carriers.