Nguyen, Brian
Brian is in the Biochemistry, Biophysics, & Structural Biology (BBSB) home area of the MBIDP, and joined the CMB Training Program in 2022.
Mentor: Dr. Todd Yeates
My research involves developing a drug carrier that can deliver therapeutics directly to a target. The hope is that since the therapeutic is delivered to where it is needed, rather than throughout the body, it could improve a therapeutic's efficacy or reduce its side effects. Nanoparticles, particles within the nanoscale range, have seen increasing usage as drug carriers since they are small enough to influence our physiology. Nanoparticle drug carriers have been used in cancer research to improve certain chemotherapies by localizing the drug toward cancer cells, avoiding side effects against non-cancerous cells. Nanoparticle drug carriers have also allowed therapeutics to bypass physiological constraints such as the blood-brain barrier, which prevents many drugs from reaching the brain. Although there is significant interest and research into targeted delivery, there are few, if any, approved therapeutics that apply these concepts. I aim to provide insight into challenges that face targeted delivery and opportunities to advance this field and enable new cures.
I will use a protein-based carrier to encapsulate and protect the therapeutic, while targeting receptors on its exterior directs it to specific cells/areas of interest. I am also testing how to trigger the delivery vehicle to release or expose the therapeutic in response to stimuli or conditions such as ligand binding or acidic pH. This project will involve computational modeling and protein design to engineer delivery vehicles, electron microscopy to validate loading capacity and assembly state, fluorescence microscopy to determine cellular uptake/localization, and drug activity assays to measure efficacy. These studies will provide preliminary data on whether the designed protein carrier can achieve the goal of targeted delivery.
