(403c) Engineering Pathways across Biological Barriers

Engineering pathways across biological barriers is entering a new era with the rapid advancement of computational resources. Our group focuses on developing multiscale simulation methods (atomistic and coarse-grained) to elucidate the interfacial phenomena associated with biological barriers that play a role in life-threatening diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, and chronic infections. In the past few years, we have made breakthroughs in three research domains - elucidated the molecular architecture of the blood-brain barrier and developed strategies to enhance the barrier’s permeability for treatment of the neurodegenerative diseases; developed telodendrimer based nanocarriers for efficient delivery of approved anticancer drugs for treatment of solid tumors; and designed an online computational platform to screen libraries of small molecules for their permeability across bacterial membranes and determine their use as antibiotics for treatment of chronic infections. Understanding the molecular basis of these biological barriers has been difficult using experimental methods. Our goal is to influence the experimentally dominated research fields by providing mechanistic, structural, and molecular insights into the biological barriers that were computationally unattainable just a few years ago.