时间：2023年10月20日（周五）上午11:00~12:30

Time：11:00-12:30 AM, Friday, October 20, 2023

地点：西湖大学云谷校区E10-405

Venue: E10-405, Yungu Campus

主持人：西湖大学工学院 特聘研究员 程钢

Host: Dr. Gang Cheng, PI of School of Engineering

主讲人/Speaker：

Ying Liu

Chair Professor of  

Chemical Engineering

University of Illinois Chicago(UIC)

Ying Liu holds the Dr. Satish C. & Asha Saxena Chair Professorship and serves as the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Additionally, she is affiliated with the Departments of Biomedical Engineering and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UIC.

Ying Liu’s academic journey is marked by interdisciplinary training. She received her B.S. in Engineering Mechanics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China in 2001, followed by her Ph.D. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2007, where she was advised by Professor Robert Prud’homme in the Department of Chemical Engineering. Remarkably, she was offered a tenure-track assistant professor position by UIC in 2006 before her graduation from Princeton University. Before officially joining UIC in 2008, Ying Liu deferred her position and spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Chicago in the Department of Chemistry and James Frank Institute. Ying Liu has garnered severalprestigious awards throughout her career, including Howard Carthorne Phillips Graduate Fellowship of Princeton University (2003), UIC Engineering Research Award (2013), National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2014), UIC Researcher and Scholar of the Year Award(2016), Chicago Diabetes Program Research Award (2016), UIC Graduate Mentor Award(2017), and Faculty and Student Team Research Award at NSF’s ChemMatCARS (2019).

Besides her academic contributions, Ying Liu is also an entrepreneur. She is a founder or cofounder for several startup biotech companies. Notably, Ying Liu serves as the Chief Technology Officer of CellTrans Inc., a biotech company that recently launched Lantidra, the first FDA approved cell therapy for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.

报告题目/Title:

Knowledge-based Design of Soft-matter Particles for Drug and Therapeutic Cell Delivery

讲座摘要/Abstract:

Growing interest is being dedicated toward soft-matter particles due to their biocompatibility and their potential to deliver a wide range of drugs and therapeutic cells. The physicochemical and surface properties of these soft-matter particles can be tailored through material selection and formation methods. This flexibility allows for the modification of particle behavior in vivo and their design to meet specific therapeutic needs. Nevertheless, the vast array of possibilities makes structural optimization impractical through empirical trials alone. An in-depth understanding of molecular interactions, reactions, and self-assembly, and intrinsic structure-property relationships at the molecular scale is crucial. In this presentation, we will focus on two categories of soft-matter particles: (1) colloidal lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) and polymeric nanoparticles (PNPs) for drug delivery, and (2) millimeter-sized toroidal-spiral particles for therapeutic cell delivery.

Our work has led to the development of a process that manipulates non-equilibrium structures through kinetic control, utilizing a sophisticated combination of mixing and drying techniques to generate LNPs and PNPs with precisely controlled properties. In addition, we employ several synchrotron X-ray and neutron scattering techniques integrated with microfluidic device and interfacial apparatus to investigate molecular packing, interactions, degradation, and self-assembly kinetics. Based on the molecular-level information, we can design the LNPs and PNPs to leverage the significant advantages of utilizing these particles for various biomedical applications.

Moving to a different category, Heterogenous toroidal-spiral particles (TSPs) with well-defined internal structure provide a substantial void volume for cell encapsulation and programed release kinetics of co-encapsulated compounds. TSPs are generated through the self-assembly process of drop sedimentation, interaction, and solidification. Extensive studies on enriched drop dynamics have established guidelines for producing TSPs reproducibly with well-controlled fine structures in a scalable manner. In this presentation we will showcase the encapsulation of islets of Langerhans for the treatment of type 1 diabetes and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell for treatment of various cancers.  reproducibly with well-controlled fine structures in a scalable manner. In this presentation we will showcase the encapsulation of islets of Langerhans for the treatment of type 1 diabetes and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell for treatment of various cancers. 

讲座联系人/Contact:

科技合作部 sci-tech02@westlake.edu.cn