Engineering Living Cells via Nanomaterials
Senior Investigators:
- Darrell Irvine (group co-leader), DMSE/Bio E
- Michael Rubner (group co-leader), DMSE
- Moungi Bawendi, Chemistry
- Francesco Stellacci, DMSE
Research Goals:
The long-term intellectual goal of this group is to develop a fundamental, generalizable understanding of how nanoparticles and polymer multilayers can be designed to integrate with living cells in ways that preserve cell viability and cellular processes while allowing materials to carry out engineered functions. These basic principles will enable rational selection of nanomaterials for diverse applications (such as drug delivery, tissue engineering, lab-on-chip/microfluidic technologies, biosensors and medical imaging, or therapeutic strategies based on nanomaterial-modified cells), suggest directions for the development of new materials for these applications, and allow us to systematically explore societal concerns relating to the potential toxicity of nanomaterials in vivo. Further, the new materials developed in this work will expand our understanding of synthetic nanomaterial structure/property relationships per se.
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Research Highlights:
Living cells fitted with “nano-backpacks” may ferry drugs to disease sites
