Engineered Nanoparticles for Gene Therapy

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

12:00 PM-1:30 PM

BIOMED Special Seminar

Title:
Engineered Nanoparticles for Gene Therapy

Speaker:
Jilian Melamed, PhD
Postdoctoral Researcher
Drew Weissman Laboratory
Perelman School of Medicine
University of Pennsylvania

Details:
Gene therapy has the potential to revolutionize the treatment of complex diseases. However, delivering nucleic acids to target cells is challenging because they are easily degraded under physiological conditions and cannot passively enter cells without a carrier. This talk will describe nanoparticle-based strategies to deliver gene therapies to cells of interest.

First, small gold nanoparticles containing a dense surface coating of small interfering RNA (siRNA) can be used to penetrate the blood-brain barrier and transfect aggressive glioblastoma cells. Silencing Gli1, a Hedgehog signaling transcription factor that promotes tumor progression, reduces the growth of glioblastoma cells and improves their response to chemotherapy.

Second, lipid nanoparticles can be optimized to deliver therapeutic mRNA sequences to the liver, immune cells, or the pancreas. The resultant protein expression profile depends on lipid nanoparticle chemistry, mRNA sequence, and the route of administration. Future research leveraging these technologies will investigate how engineered nanoparticles interact with and modulate inflammatory environments to treat diseases such as cancer and type 1 diabetes.

Biosketch:
Jilian Melamed, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Dr. Drew Weissman at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers University (2013) and her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Delaware under the advisement of Dr. Emily Day (2018), where she was a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellow. Dr. Melamed then received a Ruth L. Kirschstein F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research in the lab of Dr. Kathryn Whitehead at Carnegie Mellon University. She received the Controlled Release Society Gene Delivery and Gene Editing Trainee Award in 2020 and the Society for Biomaterials Postdoctoral Recognition Award in 2021. Her research interests include drug delivery, gene therapy, cancer nanomedicine, and immunoengineering.

Contact Information

Ken Barbee
kab33@drexel.edu