The biological differences between male and female cells may influence their uptake of nanoparticles, which have been much discussed as specific delivery vehicles for medicines.

Vahid Serpooshan, a new faculty member of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, has a recent paper published in ACS Nano making this point. He and his colleagues from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Stanford/McGill/UC Berkeley tested amniotic stem cells, derived from placental tissue. They found that female amniotic cells had significantly higher uptake of nanoparticles (quantum dots) than male cells. The effect of cell sex on nanoparticle uptake was reversed in fibroblasts. The researchers also found out that female versus male amniotic stem cells exhibited different responses to reprogramming into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs).

“We believe this is a substantial discovery and a game changer in the field of nanomedicine, in taking safer and more effective and accurate steps towards successful clinical applications,” says Serpooshan, who is also part of the Department of Pediatrics at Emory.

Serpooshan’s interests lie in the realm of pediatric cardiology. His K99 grant indicates that he is planning to develop techniques for recruiting and activating cardiomyoblasts, via “a bioengineered cardiac patch delivery of small molecules.”

Based at Emory, he joins labs with overlapping interests, such as Nawazish Naqvi’s, as well as Mike Davis and Hee Cheol Cho, who are both researchers with the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience in addition to being Coulter Department faculty members.