Leslie Chan, Ph.D.*
Postdoctoral Fellow
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“Engineering Tissue Microenvironment-Responsive Nanomaterials for Biomedical Applications”

ABSTRACT
Localized changes to the tissue microenvironment during disease provide engineering opportunities for early disease detection and treatment. In particular, nanoscale materials have the necessary resolution to interface with disease biology and can be engineered to interrogate or control biological function at the molecular scale. My work focuses on the development of smart nanomaterials that can be delivered in vivo to harness altered protease activity to generate disease readouts or to promote site-specific therapeutic activity. To do so, peptides are integrated into our materials to modulate the interaction between engineered constructs and proteins in the tissue microenvironment (i.e. cell-surface receptors, ECM proteins, proteases). By leveraging these simple peptide-protein interactions, we can build materials with more sophisticated functionalities such as (1) the ability to traffic to disease sites after in vivo administration (2) the ability to crosslink biomolecules and/or (3) protease-triggered disassembly and cargo release. In the following talk, I will discuss the design of such materials to address two major biomedical problems: coagulopathy after traumatic injury and detection and treatment monitoring for respiratory disease. In the first application, a multivalent fibrin-binding polymer is delivered systemically to crosslink fibrin matrices at sites of vascular injury to stop bleeding. In the second application, protease-responsive nanosensors with volatile reporters are delivered into the lungs to generate a rapid breath readout for respiratory disease.

BIOGRAPHY
Leslie Chan is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia’s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received her B.S. in Biomedical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2009 and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington in 2015. She completed her graduate work in the laboratory of Dr. Suzie Pun, where she developed peptide-functionalized polymers to promote blood clotting for trauma applications. As a postdoctoral fellow in the Bhatia Lab, she is currently engineering nanoscale materials to interface with microbial pathogens and the infected tissue microenvironment to diagnose, treat, and monitor bacterial infections. Leslie is the recipient of an NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, a BMES Career Development Award, and was an invited speaker in the 2019 Young Investigators Lecture Series hosted by the Caltech Division of Engineering and Applied Science.

Host: Gabe Kwong

Thursday, January 30
11:15 am - 12:15 pm
Emory HSRB bldg, E160
Video Conference: Whitaker 3115

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