Tag: LNP’s

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Two Penn Bioengineering Students Win SFB STAR Awards

Congratulations to two Bioengineering graduate students who were awarded Student Travel Achievement Recognition (STAR) Awards from the Society for Biomaterials (SFB). The STAR Award recognizes research excellence and develops future leaders within SFB and comes with a certificate and a monetary award of $250. Penn Bioengineering graduate students Rebecca Haley and Alex Hamilton, both members of the lab of Michael J. Mitchell, Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in Bioengineering, received their awards and presented on their research in the SFB annual meeting in April 2023.

Rebecca Haley, Ph.D. student in Bioengineering

Rebecca Haley is a Ph.D. student in Bioengineering and a NSF Graduate Research Fellow. In the Mitchell Lab, she focuses on the use of ionizable lipid nanoparticles for the delivery of protein cargos. Supported by this STAR award, she presented her work delivering small protein RAS-inhibitors that reduce cancer cell proliferation. Rebecca is interested in expanding the applications of lipid nanoparticle technology, allowing currently limited therapeutics to achieve functional delivery and, hopefully, clinical success.

Alex Hamilton, Ph.D. student in Bioengineering

Alex Hamilton is a Ph.D. student in Bioengineering and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. Alex’s work in the Mitchell lab focuses on non-viral nucleic acid delivery. His research interests include cancer immunotherapy, vaccines, and fetal-maternal medicine. He is currently engaged in using novel high-throughput screening techniques to accelerate the discovery process for lipid nanoparticle development for a variety of disease applications.

Two more Mitchell Lab members were likewise recognized with honorable mention inn the STAR Awards: Hannah Safford, a Ph.D. student in Bioengineering and NSF Fellow, and Rohan Palanki, a M.D.-Ph.D. student in Bioengineering and NIH Fellow

Learn more about the Mitchell Lab’s research in biomaterials science, drug delivery, and cellular and molecular bioengineering in the lab’s website.

Read more stories featuring Mitchell and his team here.

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Targeted Prenatal Therapy for Mothers and Their Babies Addresses Longstanding Gap in Health Equity

by Melissa Pappas

The research team from left to right includes Kelsey Swingle, Hannah Safford, Alex Hamilton, Ajay Thatte, Hannah Geisler, and Mike Mitchell.

New research on reproductive health demonstrates the first successful delivery of mRNA to placental cells to treat pre-eclampsia at its root.

Pre-eclampsia is a leading cause of stillbirths and prematurity worldwide, occurring in 3 – 8 % of pregnancies. A disorder characterized by high maternal blood pressure, it results from insufficient vasodilation in the placenta, restricting blood flow from the mother to the fetus.

Currently, a health-care plan for someone with pre-eclampsia involves diet and movement changes, frequent monitoring, blood pressure management, and sometimes early delivery of the baby. These standards of care address symptoms of the condition, not the root cause, and further perpetuate health inequity.

Now, Penn engineers are addressing this longstanding gap in reproductive health care with targeted RNA therapy.

The COVID vaccines demonstrated how lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) efficiently deliver mRNA to target cells. The success of LNPs is opening doors for a variety of RNA therapies aiming to treat the root causes of illness and disease. However, drug development and health care have consistently neglected a portion of the population in need of targeted care the most – pregnant people and their babies.

Targeted Treatment for Pre-eclampsia. Current treatment: Early delivery. Results in high maternal blood pressure, restricted blood flow to the fetus. New treatment: Targeted RNA therapy and blood pressure monitoring. Strategically designed Lipid Nanoparticles deliver mRNA to placental cells. Vascular endothelial growth factor expands blood vessels, restores blood flow.In one of the first studies of its kind, published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Michael Mitchell, J. Peter and Geri Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in Bioengineering, and Kelsey Swingle, Ph.D. student in the Mitchell Lab and lead author, describe their development of an LNP with the ability to target and deliver mRNA to trophoblasts, endothelial cells, and immune cells in the placenta.

Once these cells receive the mRNA, they create vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a protein that helps expand the blood vessels in the placenta to reduce the mother’s blood pressure and restore adequate circulation to the fetus. The researchers’ successful trials in mice may lead to promising treatments for pre-eclampsia in humans.

Read the full story in Penn Engineering Today.