Dismantling Barriers to Drug and Cellular Delivery for Cancer and Other Diseases
Seminar with Yevgeny Brudno
Assistant Professor - Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering
NC State University, UNC-Chapel Hill
Abstract:
A myriad of challenges plague current efforts toward safe and effective disease treatment. In the realm of small molecule drugs and biologicals, systemic administration leads to diffuse biodistribution and systemic side effects that limit doses and efficacy. Local depot can overcome some of these challenges, but these suffer from depot exhaustion and dose-limiting local impact. With cellular therapeutics, a costly and labor-intensive manufacturing process inflates the price and limits patient access. This seminar will describe our lab’s efforts to tackle the challenges of therapeutic delivery and access through the development of two technologies. First, we have developed injectable drug-eluting depots that can be repeatedly and noninvasively refilled by systemic administration of inert protodrug refills. Refillable depots enable repeat local drug presentation, temporal regulation, and the prospect of changing drug or dose with disease progression. Second, we have developed biomaterial scaffolds that recapitulate the key functions of ex vivo CAR-T cell production (activation, transduction, expansion) inside the body, reducing CAR-T cell manufacturing from the conventional 4-8 weeks of effort to a single day. The application and utility of these technology in both cancer as well as other diseases will be highlighted.
Yevgeny Brudno is a Joint Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UNC – Chapel Hill and NC State – Raleigh. He earned dual B.A. degrees in Chemistry and Biophysics with minors in Math and Philosophy. He obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry at Harvard University, developing directed evolution technologies with Prof. David R. Liu. Dr. From there, he went on to do a postdoctoral fellowship at the Wyss Institute at Harvard with Prof. David Mooney, developing controlled release drug delivery technologies for cancer and regenerative medicine. He joined UNC/NC State in 2017, with research interests that span organic synthetic chemistry, materials science and pharmacology. Dr. Brudno’s research rooted in the belief that advances in Chemistry and the basic molecular sciences can generate meaningful change in how therapies are designed, produced, and administered. More information about his group’s work can be found at https://pharmaco.bme.unc.edu/.