IGERT Nanomedicine Distinguished Lecture

Date: 11/06/2009
Time: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Location: 320 Behrakis
Speaker: Dr. Omid Farokhzad, Laboratory of Nanomedicine and Biomaterials, Department of Anesthesiology

Multifunctional Polymeric Nanoparticles for Medical Applications

A variety of organic and inorganic materials have been utilized to generate nanoparticles for drug delivery applications, including polymeric nanoparticles, dendrimers, nanoshells, liposomes, nucleic acid based nanoparticles, magnetic nanoparticles, and virus nanoparticles. The two most commonly used systems are polymeric nanoparticles and liposomes. Polymeric nanoparticles can deliver drugs in the optimum dosage over time, thus increasing the efficacy of the drug, maximizing patient compliance and enhancing the ability to use highly toxic, poorly soluble, or relatively unstable drugs. These systems can also be used to co-deliver two or more drugs for combination therapy. The successful clinical translation of therapeutic nanoparticles requires optimization of many distinct parameters including: variation in the composition of the carrier system, drug loading efficiency, surface hydrophilicity, surface charge, particle size, density of possible ligands for targeting, etc., resulting in a large number of potential variables for optimization which is impractical to achieve using a low throughput approach. More recently combinatorial approaches have been developed to precisely engineer nanoparticles and screen multiple nanoparticle characteristics simultaneously with the goal of identifying formulations with the desired physical and biochemical properties for each specific application. The goal of this talk is to summarize the key components required for creating effective targeted nanoparticle conjugates. The structure and properties of various targeting ligands, as well as the development and evaluation of therapeutic and imaging conjugates that take advantage of the unique properties of these ligands will be discussed.