Biomaterials Science Blog

Jianqin Lu, BPharm, PhD, is an Assistant Professor and Director in Pharmaceutics and Pharmacokinetics Track at R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy, The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA. Dr. Lu received his PhD in Pharmaceutics from the University of Pittsburgh and had postdoc trainings at University of Chicago and UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine/California NanoSystems Institute. Dr. Lu joined UArizona in 2019 and his lab strives to develop innovative, safe, and efficacious therapeutics at the interface of drug delivery, synthetic chemistry, pharmaceutics, nanotechnology, biomaterials, and tumor immunology to address the pressing unmet needs in cancer and other diseases therapy and prevention.

Dr. Lu’s research work has been published in Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Biomaterials, etc, and has resulted in a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) (R35) from NIH/NIGMS, a Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) Foundation Research Starter Grant in Drug Delivery, and several pilot and seed grants from the State of Arizona’s Technology and Research Initiative Fund (TRIF)/BIO5 Institute and NIH-sponsored The Southwest Environmental Health Sciences Center.

Recipient of the Norman R. and Priscilla A. Farnsworth Award at the University of Pittsburgh, the NIH/NCI Ruth L. Kirschstein Institutional National Research Service Award (T32) in Tumor Immunology at UCLA, and the 2022 American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Pharmaceutics Research Award, Dr. Lu was the Secretary of Knowledge Management in AACP Pharmaceutics Section and serves as the Associate Editor for Frontiers in Medical Technology: Nano-Based Drug Delivery.You can follow Jianqin Lu on Twitter @JianqinLu_Lab or on LinkedIn

Read Jianqin’s Emerging Investigator article, ‘Surface-Modified Nanotherapeutics Targeting Atherosclerosis Efficiency’ 

Check out our interview with Jianqin below:

1. How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

Biomaterials Science is one of the leading journals in the field for biomaterials, drug delivery, and nanomedicine. I found Biomaterials Science is the perfect place to publish this piece of work, which enables widespread visibility to a large amount of audience.

2. What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

To create innovative, safe and efficacious nanotherapeutic platform for the improved drug and gene delivery for treating various diseases including cancers and atherosclerosis. To find clinically relevant animal models for testing the developed nanomedicines, which enables good correlation with human patients.

3. In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

How can the improved nanocarriers be used to further enhance the therapeutic delivery of various drugs.

Read Catherine’s Emerging Investigator article, ‘Destructive fibrotic teamwork: how both microenvironment stiffness and profibrotic interleukin 13 impair alveolar macrophage phenotype and function’

Check out Catherine’s lab group webpage to find out more about the group’s research https://sites.udel.edu/cfromen/

You can follow Catherine on Twitter @cfromen and @FromenLab or on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathy-fromen/

Read our interview below:

1. How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

I was incredibly excited to receive an invitation to be featured in the Emerging Investigator Series of Biomaterials Science because this journal is one of the top places I look for exciting research within biomaterials and models of the lung, more specifically. Our manuscript introduces a biomaterials-based model of the human airway to evaluate changes to innate immune cells within a fibrotic-like microenvironment. Fibrosis remains such a complex and challenging set of diseases to treat and biomaterial-based models have a tremendous opportunity to unravel this complexity and provide opportunities to screen new therapeutic approaches. Biomaterials Science has been a leader in publishing many influential papers discussing biomaterials approaches to modelling, understanding, and treating fibrosis and I am very proud to contribute our piece in advancing this important field.

2. What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am certainly excited by the advances that biomaterials have enabled in engineering complex microenvironments that can mimic pulmonary tissue: in structure, composition, and barrier properties. I am even more excited about how these emerging models can be used to predict therapeutic responses in the lung. For inhaled medicines especially, it remains exceedingly difficult to directly sample responses in the airway to understand how inhaled formulations act in the lung; new, complex models will be critical in improving predictive capabilities and advancing inhaled therapeutics, such as inhaled vaccines or immunotherapies. It’s challenging to think about how far we have to go, but motivating at the same time.

3. In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

This a tough question; how to pick just one! For inhaled drug delivery, the big questions are “how can we predict where an inhaled agent goes?” and once there, “how does it work?”, especially in directing local immune responses. Answering these questions will allow us to develop more complex inhalable immunotherapies and better treat patients with respiratory conditions.

4. Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

Find your “people” – in life, in your institution, in your professional societies, in your students – and work to maintain those connections. They’re the ones who will pick you up when you fall, cheer for you when you need it most, and open doors you didn’t even know existed.

Dr Suhair Sunoqrot is an Associate Professor of Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine at Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan, Faculty of Pharmacy. Dr Sunoqrot received a BSc in Pharmacy from the University of Jordan in 2007, and a PhD in Biopharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2013. During her PhD, she worked on various projects involving the development of lipid- and polymer-based nanocarriers for targeted anti-cancer drug delivery. Notably, she was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar in Prof Phillip Messersmith’s lab at UC Berkeley, and a Daniel Turnberg Fellow in Prof Khuloud Al-Jamal’s lab at King’s College London. She received the PhosAgro/UNESCO/IUPAC Green Chemistry for Life Award in 2018 and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) Prize for Young Scientists from Jordan for the same year. She was elected as a member of the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities (AGYA) for 2019 – 2024 and a TWAS Young Affiliate for 2021 – 2026. Dr Sunoqrot’s research focuses on the development of nanoscale solutions to tackle delivery challenges of poorly water-soluble drug candidates, with special interest in the valorization of plant polyphenols both as therapeutic agents and as nanomaterial building blocks. She can be followed on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ssunoqrot/), ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Suhair-Sunoqrot), and Twitter (@SuhairSunoqrot).

Read Suhair’s Emerging Investigator article, ‘Rhoifolin loaded in PLGA nanoparticles alleviates oxidative stress and inflammation in vitro and in vivo‘ DOI: 10.1039/D2BM00309K

Check out our interview with Suhair below:

1. How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

Nanomedicine is a multidisciplinary field that combines knowledge in materials science, biology, and medicine, making Biomaterials Science an ideal place to publish research on this topic. The Journal’s high standards, rigorous review process, and international readership ensure maximum dissemination of important research findings to the scientific community and beyond.

2. What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am continuously amazed by the countless possibilities enabled by nanotechnology, particularly in the field of medicine. We are currently interested in plant polyphenols both as therapeutic agents and as nanomaterial building blocks. This area of research is exciting as much as it is challenging, due to the chemical diversity of these compounds and their unique physicochemical and biological properties, which need to be properly elucidated to advance them further in preclinical and clinical settings.

3. In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

With all the great advances being made in nanoscience and nanomedicine, some important questions need to be answered concerning their interactions with the bio-interface, in vivo fate, and long-term physiological effects. From a manufacturing standpoint, the scalability of the various nanomedicine formulations, their affordability, and their environmental footprint should also be taken into consideration.

4. Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

My best advice to other early career scientists is the following quote by Marie Curie, “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.”

Dr Truong is an ARC DECRA Fellow and a group leader at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Australia. Dr Truong received his PhD in 2013 from the University of Queensland, Australia. After that, he took up a postdoctoral position working with Prof Thomas Davis at Monash University. Dr Truong’s work uniquely spans across multiple research fields (polymer chemistry, nanotechnology, materials, biology, immunology, medical imaging and pharmaceutical sciences), allowing him to solve complex challenges in both fundamental synthesis and biomedical applications. Currently, his group focuses on making advanced polymers and nanomaterials for delivering drugs and vaccines to the right targeted tissues/cells and exploiting these newly developed platforms to address global health challenges including pandemics, cardiovascular diseases, cancers and antibiotics resistance. He can be found on Twitter @Nghia_P_Truong.

Visit the group website to find out more about Nghia Truong’s research: https://www.monash.edu/pharm/research/themes/drug-delivery-disposition-and-dynamics/research-groups/truong-group

Check out Nghia Truong’s Emerging Investigator article, ‘In vivo delivery of plasmid DNA by lipid nanoparticles: the influence of ionizable cationic lipids on organ-selective gene expression’ and read all of the 2022 Emerging Investigators articles in the collection here.

Read our interview below with Nghia Truong:

1. How do you feel about Biomaterials Science as a place to publish research on this topic?

Biomaterials Science is among the best journals to publish my research on this topic. The journal has not only an excellent reputation and a high impact factor but also a broad readership, ensuring the visibility of my research.

2. What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment and what do you find most challenging about your research?

I am really excited to work on lipid nanoparticles because they really save lives. Without lipid nanoparticles, we could not develop mRNA vaccines for combating COVID-19. The challenge lies in how to improve the lipid nanoparticles even further as the current vaccines are not perfect and there is still a long list of other diseases we can cure using lipid nanoparticles and gene technology.

3. In your opinion, what are the most important questions to be asked/answered in this field of research?

I think the most important question in my field is how to improve the delivery efficiency of lipid nanoparticles while reducing unwanted side effects as the answer will certainly help us make better vaccines and more effective drugs. This is also the question my group is trying to answer by leveraging our strength in multiple research fields (polymer chemistry, nanotechnology, materials, biology, immunology, medical imaging and pharmaceutical sciences).

4. Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

If possible early career scientists should carefully choose and focus on research topics we love and we are good at. With love and talent, we can solve real-life problems while also enjoying our challenging academic careers.