Research Presentations


Keynote at BioDiscovery:


"Vascular zip codes in drug and nanodevice targeting"

Erkki Ruoslahti, Ph.D.

Dr. Ruoslahti will discuss how our understanding of the unique characteristics of blood vessels in different tissues can assist us in designing smart nanodevice delivery systems for tumors. Since every normal tissue and diseased tissues, too, puts a specific signature on its endothelium, these signatures can serve as zip codes for the delivery of diagnostic probes and therapeutic agents to disease sites.

Erkki Ruoslahti


Novel model systems for discovering new therapeutic targets.


Interdisciplinary Research in Stem Cell Biology and Engineering

Dennis Clegg, Professor and Chair, MCDB, Bio-molecular Sciences and Engineering (BMSE)

Listen to a brief summary of new research projects related to stem cell biology. Regenerative medicine is an emerging area that will only realize its great potential through novel collaborative research approaches, and UCSB is well positioned to make significant contributions by leveraging fundamental biomedical research efforts with our extraordinary enabling technologies in materials, micro-processing and bioengineering.

Dennis Clegg

microRNAs: A Novel Class of Targets for Medical Intervention

Kenneth Kosik, M.D., Harriman Professor of Neuroscience Research, MCDB, Co-Director, Neuroscience Research Institute, BMSE

microRNAs are small non-coding transcripts that regulate the translation or stability of multiple mRNAs. Important roles for microRNAs have been suggested in development, neural plasticity and cancer. Their simple structures and ability to design inhibitors based on Watson-Crick base pairing principles opens a novel target space. Because microRNAs can regulate a large number of mRNAs that may share common functions, targeting critical microRNAs in a disease pathway may serve as a validation or intervention strategy.

Kennith Kosik

Aging and age-related disease

Joel Rothman, Ph.D., Professor, MCDB, BMSE

Programmed cell death (apoptosis), a key process underlying human age-related disorders, including neurodegeneration and cancer, provides a promising target for therapeutic intervention in many pathologies. Moreover, replacement of senescent or damaged cells is crucial for youthfulness and treatment of degenerative cell loss. We are using large-scale functional genomics methods to characterize the regulatory networks for cell death and renewal. The pathways emerging from these networks promise to identify new targets for drug design and suggest genetic modifications that might be used to generate new classes of multipotential stem cells from differentiated tissue.

Joel Rothman

New functions of polycystin-1, the protein affected in polycystic kidney disease

Thomas Weimbs, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, MCDB

Autosomal-dominant polycystic kidney disease (ADPKD) is one of the most common monogenic inherited diseases and leads to kidney failure. We have identified new signaling functions of polycystin-1 which suggest options for pharmacological intervention.

Thomas Weimbs

Cross-Protective Vaccines Against Emerging Infectious Agents

Michael Mahan, Ph.D., Professor, MCDB, BMSE

The development of vaccines that protect against more than one strain is critical to our defense against bio-warfare agents and emerging infectious diseases. Infection with several different strains may override the immunity triggered by a single vaccine, and pathogenic strains can develop in vaccinated individuals, making our current vaccines ineffective. We will discuss the development of a new generation of vaccines that confer a potent state of cross-protective immunity against a variety of infectious agents.

Michael Mahan


Nano-Bioengineering


Biomarker discovery and medical diagnostics

Norbert O. Reich, Ph.D., Professor, Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, BMSE

Reich will provide a brief overview of work in our lab focusing on bacterial and mammalian DNA methyltransferase, as well as emerging nanoparticle-based detection methods for biomarker, diagnostic and basic research applications.

Norbert Reich


Engineering Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery: Does Shape Matter?

Samir Mitragotri, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering

Drugs can be encapsulated in polymeric nanoparticles for targeted or systemic delivery. Learn about methods for engineering properties of nanoparticles, especially shape, to obtain optimal performance in drug delivery applications.

Samir Mitragotri


Nanoparticles for Targeted Drug Delivery

Joseph A. Zasadzinski, Ph.D., Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials

Find out about our development of two novel nanometer-scale systems for targeted intravenous drug delivery. One is based on a bi-layer in bi-layer multi-compartmental structure that shows remarkably extended drug release profiles compared to conventional bi-layer liposomes. The second system is a core-shell nanoparticle that can be externally triggered by pulsed near infrared light to deliver its contents on demand by local heating and melting of the nanoparticle cores. Both systems take advantage of their small size to preferentially target tumor and inflammation sites.

Joseph Zasadzinski


Peptide Materials Engineering

Matthew Tirrell, Ph.D., Richard A. Auhll Dean of Engineering, Professor, Materials, Chemical Engineering, and BMSE, and Dean of the College of Engineering

Peptides are functional modules of protein macromolecules that can be displayed apart from the whole protein to create biofunctional surfaces and interfaces, or can be re-assembled in new ways to create synthetic mimics of protein structures. Each of these routes are being employed to gain new insight into protein folding and to develop new, functional, biomolecular materials. Examples of work from our laboratory in this area using peptide-lipid conjugate molecules (peptide amphiphiles) will be discussed relating to multi-functional surfaces, liposomal drug delivery, protein analogous micelles, DNA-binding peptide modules and anti-microbial peptides.

Matthew Tirrell