Biomedical & Chemical Engineering Candidate Seminar: Nicholas Lamson

The Department of Biomedical & Chemical Engineering is pleased to welcome faculty candidate Dr. Nicholas Lamson from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in presenting his candidate seminar: “Bioinspired Strategies for Improving Drug Delivery Through Epithelial and Endothelial Barriers”

Abstract

Biologics and other macromolecule drugs, along with rationally designed small molecule drugs and combinations, are undergoing explosive discovery and development, but their success is hindered by formidable challenges to entering the body and reaching target organs. To enter the body, drugs must pass through an epithelial cell barrier – typically the skin for topical treatments, intestinal tract for oral formulations, or lining the nasal cavity for inhaled therapeutics – that has evolved to selectively exclude materials from entering the body. Injectable drugs can physically bypass external drug delivery barriers, but needle phobias and the regular need for clean syringes lead to poor patient compliance that hinders long term therapeutic efficacy. To address this, the first portion of this talk will highlight three strategies for enabling transport of orally administered protein drugs across the intestinal epithelial barrier, with particular focus on a natural products approach inspired by native contents of the digestive tract. Once therapeutics have entered the body and reached systemic circulation, most must overcome additional hurdles to accumulate within their target organ. One of the greatest internal drug delivery hurdles is the blood‐brain barrier, the endothelial linings of capillaries that selectively exclude materials – including more than 95% of newly developed therapies – from entering the brain space. The latter portion of this talk will discuss ongoing work developing nanocarriers for delivery of systemically administered therapeutics to treat glioblastoma brain tumors, highlighting bioinspired strategies for targeting endothelial cells and for dictating intracellular trafficking.

For more information, contact Prof. Zhen Ma at zma112@syr.edu