10/13/2023 Julia Park
Written by Julia Park
Assistant Professor Jie Feng has been awarded funding from the National Science Foundation to further his research efforts aimed at improving targeted drug delivery and controlled release of therapeutics with active lipid vesicles.
Feng’s proposed project, “Unlocking the Potential of Active Lipid Vesicles for Directed Delivery and Controlled Release of Therapeutic Payloads,” will be funded by nearly $500k and is in collaboration with On Shun Pak of Santa Clara University.
The next generation of drug delivery systems is focused on directed delivery and controlled release of therapeutic payloads at targeted locations, but this presents significant technical challenges as it relies on the capability of generating both directed motion of the therapeutic carriers and controlled release of their content effectively at the microscopic scale.
To overcome this challenge, Feng and Pak propose to utilize lipid vesicles to provide a versatile platform that would achieve both the directed motion and controlled release. Their proposed work builds on the innate drug encapsulation capacity of lipid vesicles, which can also be leveraged to encapsulate self-propelled particles for directed motion of the vesicles. The researchers have also previously found that these lipid vesicles can actually be ruptured by light-induced oxidation stress, which could enable the rapid release of its therapeutic contents in a controlled way.
This new funding will enable Feng to evaluate and understand the dynamics of these processes, to ultimately inform the development of a provable system for vesicle-based drug delivery. In part, he and his team hope to capitalize on recent developments of micro-swimmers to assist in the targeted delivery of the drug-carrying lipid vesicles. Feng hopes their combined experimental and theoretical findings will lay the groundwork for the next generation of programmable therapeutic delivery systems.
Additionally, Feng said, “This partnership between Santa Clara, a primarily undergraduate institution and our R1 university hopes to overcome the challenges of doing high-impact research between these distinct types of institutions.”