The gastrointestinal (GI) tract houses diverse intestinal enzymes from the human host and gut microbiome that play critical roles in mucosal immunity, host-microbiome interactions, drug metabolism, and digestion. Dysregulated intestinal enzyme activities give rise to a broad range of GI pathologies and can therefore serve as functional biomarkers of disease. However, current strategies for enzyme activity measurements often rely on invasive endoscopy to biopsy intestinal tissue samples for activity measurements in the clinical lab. As an alternative to endscopy, we have developed a new Volatile-releasing Activity-based Probe (VAPR) platform that enables remote sensing of pathology-causing intestinal enzyme activities via breath testing. The platform comprises ingestible sugar-based probes that sense and produce breath signals for specific intestinal glycosidase activities. In this talk, Leslie Chan will discuss the design and application of the probes for inflammatory bowel disease and for detecting harmful drug-metabolizing enzyme activity from the gut microbiome.

Bio:

Leslie Chan’s lab focuses on the development of bioresponsive nanomaterials that are delivered in vivo to harness biochemical cues in diseased tissue as triggers for disease readouts or site-specific therapeutic activity. They are especially interested in developing these tools to study, detect, and treat microbe-driven disease states (e.g. infections, microbiome dysbiosis, inflammation). Their goal is to develop solutions that can be readily translated at the point of care, for at-home use, or deployed for infectious disease surveillance to promote public health. To achieve this, they integrate nanomaterial design, chemical biology, and medicine and leverage collaborations with clinicians, immunologists, microbiologists, and other engineers.