TOPIC：Nanoparticle targeting to inflamed tissues

SPEAKER:  Prof. Dr. Andrew M. Smith, Department of Bioengineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), USA
TIME：October 16 (Sunday)AM10:00 
LOCATION：Room 528, Chemistry Building A (化学楼5楼演讲厅)
INVITER：Prof. Xinyuan Zhu (朱新远教授)

Abstract: Inflammation is causally linked to numerous clinical pathologies, including cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes. Pro-inflammatory macrophages have been widely implicated in the initiation and progression of these diseases and therefore are a key target for therapeutic intervention. We have recently developed a new macrophage targeting strategy for imaging agents and anti-inflammatory prodrugs that shows unusually high targeting efficiency to inflamed tissue in vivo. We observe that 40-60% of the total administered dose selectively distributes to inflamed adipose tissues of animals with type 2 diabetes, and nearly 90% of the targeted dose is associated with macrophages. This strategy may be widely adopted for the detection and treatment of diseases associated with macrophage-mediated inflammation.

Bio: Andrew M. Smith is an Assistant Professor of Bioengineering and Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He joined the UIUC faculty in 2012 and since has been appointed as Bioengineering Associate Head and Faculty Entrepreneurship Fellow. Dr. Smith received a B.S. in Chemistry in 2002 and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering in 2008, both from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He trained with Professor Shuming Nie as a graduate student and Whitaker Foundation Fellow and continued his postdoctoral studies at Emory University as a Distinguished CCNE Fellow. He has been awarded numerous grants from the US National Institutes of Health, including a prestigious K99/R00, has authored 51 publications, and has 7 patents granted or pending. Dr. Smith\'s research interests include nanomaterials engineering, single-molecule imaging, molecular pathology, and new educational practices at the undergraduate and graduate levels.