Register for the Topics in Bioengineering 2021-22 Series here (via Zoom). Registration is quick and easy; you only have to sign up once to receive the link that will be used for all TIB webinars this semester. 

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Modern medicine has done phenomenal progress in dissecting the molecular nature of many diseases. Such efforts have been mirrored with ever sophisticated methods to design drugs or biological therapies such as gene editing, monoclonal antibodies, etc. Yet, we often fail to move away from the molecular level and wrongly assume that the drug affinity with its target is a sufficient guarantee to ensure effective therapy. For most conditions, the target molecules are often not unique to the diseased area, and such promiscuity inevitably leads to side effects.

Here I will propose an integrative approach to tackle such a challenge built around the complexity of our body and its barriers. I will show how to engineer multivalent systems to target cells phenotypically( i.e. as a function of their unique receptors compositions). I will discuss how such interactions control cellular delivery and intracellular trafficking. Finally, I will show how we can exploit metabolite gradients to guide therapy to the desired area integrating chemotaxis into drug delivery systems.