Marilyn Rampersad Mackiewicz - Chemistry Departmental Seminar

 Engineered nanomaterials are increasingly developed for nanoparticle-based therapeutics, drug delivery, imaging, and labeling agents of cell-based therapeutics, however, not many have made it through FDA approval and there are concerns about their impact on human health. Because of the complexity of nanomaterial structures and challenges with uptake, circulation, biodistribution, nanoparticle-biological interactions(NBIs), and toxicity more intensive studies are required for clinical translation and safe nanomaterial design. Current NBIs and nanotoxicology studies occur with a range of in vitro and in vivo biological models, including cell culture, embryonic zebrafish, and other whole animal models as well as in silico computational modeling to understand their NBI and potential toxicity. While these studies have revealed valuable information on how the physicochemical features drive nanoparticle NBIs and toxicity, the interpretation of the data to assign risk assessment is still challenging as these studies are not correlated over the multiple scales at which they are conducted, study one variable at a time, and do not often take into account the effect of physical and chemical transformations of the nanomaterials resulting in a discrepancy in the data. Consequently, there is a gap in our knowledge of how specific physicochemical properties influence NBI’s adverse biological outcomes. There is an urgent need to correct this gap in knowledge because until we have it, it will be difficult to advance clinical translation and design of safe nanomaterials. To address these grand challenges, the Mackiewicz group is working on the design and study of NMs to advance the clinical translation of safe and promising NMs in medicine. Our transdisciplinary approach involves two complementary research thrusts: 1) the strategic design of safe nanoscale materials that interface with biological systems, and 2)  the study of NBIs and nanotoxicology in biologically relevant systems. In this talk, I will discuss how we have iteratively evolved NMs closer to the clinical translation by designing NMs with bioinspired ligands enabling tunable libraries of NMs for the nanomedicine community and parameters we have discovered for safer NMs design with minimal human and environmental impact. We hope that elucidating the fundamental understanding of the impact of NMs design and properties in biological environments will lead to the design of innovative diagnostic and therapeutic solutions to solve global health challenges.