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Session: Technical Session V

Nanomedicine and Nanoscale Delivery V

Thursday, July 11, 2024
9:00 AM – 11:00 AM CET
Location: Sala Europa
Development, physicochemical and biological characterization and validation of nanomedicines and biomedical nanotechnology-based approaches tailored to deliver therapeutic agents with distinct properties, such as small molecules, peptides, proteins, antibodies across biological barriers specifically targeting disease-associated molecules, cells, tissues or organs.


Presentations


Tissue- and Cell-Responsive Materials for Medical Applications
One-size fits all mentality in biomaterial design ignores the profound changes in tissue surface chemistry and biology, resulting in suboptimal material performance when applied to different tissue types and states (healthy and diseased). My lab devised materials that respond to cues from tissues and cells to maximize therapeutic efficacy and tolerability. At the tissue scale, we developed adhesive hydrogels that can be formulated to respond to tissue type and pathologic state to improve material performance, adhesion strength, and biocompatibility. At the cellular level, nanoparticle structures were engineered to respond to intracellular states, enhance nanoparticle potency and stability, and expand the therapeutic window—allowing studying the drug mechanism of action. The lab is particularly interested in engineering biomaterials to overcome barriers to the controlled spatiotemporal distribution of immunotherapies and enabling their subsequent combination with existing and novel therapeutic modalities to revolutionize the care of patients with cancer and autoimmune diseases. Recently, we have used these technologies to enable generating a ‘living’ therapeutics by local and sustained delivery of chemoimmunotherapy to brain tumors that reprogram the immune system. We show that material design and structure influence therapeutic outcomes and alter the spatiotemporal characteristics of the incited immunomodulatory responses in the treatment of solid tumors, enabling studying basic questions in immunobiology. We also show that with the aid of polymeric microneedles, we can release factors that can help recruit and expand endogenous regulatory T cells right at the lesion site that can counteract the autoreactive immune cells, which will revolutionize treatment outcomes in patients with autoimmune skin diseases such as alopecia areata, vitiligo, psoriasis, and other common skin diseases.
Natalie Artzi, PhD, Harvard Medical School


Evaluation of the degradation mechanisms and release kinetics for multi-compartmentalized polymeric microMESH implants
Complex therapeutic regimens can be implemented using microMESH for the treatment of glioblastoma. Specifically, the release profiles of therapeutics can be precisely tailored to meet specific needs by adjusting the biomaterials properties and the geometrical and mechanical features, as well as drug loading strategies. 
Irene Guerriero, PhD Student, Italian Institute of Technology (IIT)