Laboratory for Nanotherapeutics Research

Department of Bioengineering

Delivery of genes to target cells in specific tissues, or Gene Therapy, has the potential to prevent, treat, or even reverse disorders ranging from cancer to HIV/AIDS. Gene Therapy also has many potential applications in Tissue Engineering/Regenerative Medicine where the controlled differentiation of stem cells may be necessary to obtain highly organized tissue structures.

Gene Therapy is inherently dependent on Gene Delivery, the way in which the genes are ultimately transported to the nucleus of target cells. Complex biological environments, such as the extracellular environment and the cell cytoplasm, may pose significant barriers to efficient therapeutic gene delivery.

Synthetic polymer-based gene delivering nanotherapeutics have several advantages over viral systems, such as less immunogenicity and ability to carry larger cargo DNA; however, they suffer from significantly lower gene delivery efficiencies and often transfect cells nonspecifically. In addition, the nanoscale features of nonviral gene delivery systems are often difficult to control. Virus-based therapeutics, on the other hand, have highly defined structures that can be manipulated very specifically through genetic engineering.

 

We have projects ongoing at the interface of multiple fields, including Gene Delivery, Tissue engineering/regenerative medicine, Biomedical Imaging, Protein Engineering, and Biosensing. We have a number of collaborators that provide clinical applications for our platform technologies, such as breast cancer, bone repair, and Parkinson’s disease.

 

 

UNCOVER

Using quantitative fluorescence microscopy approaches, we seek to identify rate-limiting steps to the efficient delivery of nanotherapeutics. The biophysical interactions of nanodevices and the biological environment (e.g. blood, extracellular matrix, and cytoplasm) are being investigated.

 

 

BUILD

We strive to use a creative combination of synthetic chemistry and recombinant DNA technology to design novel nanodevices for the delivery of diagnostics and therapeutics. Our research is focused on interlacing the critical properties of viral vectors with those of nonviral vectors to engineer nanotherapeutics with high efficiency but minimal immunogenicity.

 

 

APPLY

Our ultimate goal is to translate our nanotherapeutics research into the clinic by applying our platform technologies to clinically important diseases.  As Bioengineers at Rice University, we are dedicated to narrowing the gap between bench research and clinical reality.

Research