Research Interests

Lack of stability often limits the use of biopharmaceuticals (e.g., proteins and plasmid DNA) as human medicines. Loss of potency can occur during manufacturing, storage, or administration. One major obstacle impeding the successful application of biopharmaceutical drugs is the difficulty to develop a simple, safe and efficacious delivery system.  Biopharmaceutical delivery vectors must compact biopharmaceutical material into nanoparticles that colloidally stable, protect biopharmaceuticals from enzymatic degradation, effectively transit them to target cells and achieve a significant efficiency yield. Our research interests focus on several areas. These include the utilization of nanotechnology to treat and prevent diseases, design and evaluation of formulations to improve delivery devices and stability of biopharmaceutical drugs, investigation of the utility of nanoparticles targeted to cell adhesion molecules for the treatment of diseases such as cancer