The 10th anniversary of the Center for Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine (CDDN) will be observed with the return of its founder for a full day workshop on Nov. 7.
Alexander “Sasha” Kabanov, Ph.D., D.Sc., founding director of UNMC’s CDDN, will present one of two keynote lectures at the workshop to be held in the Michael F. Sorrell Center for Health Science Education, Room 1005.
He will lecture on how nanomedicine polymers are transforming cancer care and he’ll also give the “Founding Father” address at the end of the workshop.
Dr. Kabanov served for nearly 18 years at UNMC where he was the Parke-Davis Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences and director of the Center for Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine, which he founded in 2004.
He is now professor and director of the Center for Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Pharmacy and co-director of the Carolina Institute for Nanomedicine.
Samir Mitragotri, Ph.D., professor of chemical engineering, Center for Bioengineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), will present the other keynote speech strategies for targeting nanoparticles to diseased sites.
Dr. Mitragotri is the founding director of the Center for BioEngineering and director of the Translational Medical Research Laboratory at UCSB. His research focuses on drug delivery and biotechnology and has led to dozens of patents and pending applications. His research has enabled the development of needle-free methods of drug delivery, synthetic blood components that mimic the structure and certain functions of red blood cells and platelets, and nanoparticles that amplify the effectiveness of targeted drug delivery, such as chemotherapy.
Balaji Narasimhan, Ph.D., professor, chemical and biological engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, also will present a lecture on using nanoparticles to mimic a natural infection and induce a vigorous immune response.
Dr. Narasimhan’s laboratory has bridged fundamental studies on molecular mechanisms of immune cell activation with the development of novel nanoparticle-based platforms that can be translated into next generation vaccine products. The platforms have been developed for: vaccines against infectious diseases such as influenza, pneumonia, anthrax and pneumonic plague; induction of cell-mediated immune responses, which are critical for diseases like cancer; and sustained delivery of antibiotics, which is being tested for the treatment of malaria and other tropical diseases.
The workshop will be opened by CDDN co-directors David Oupicky, Ph.D., and Tatiana Bronich, Ph.D., both professors of pharmaceutical science in the College of Pharmacy. Additional speakers are new investigators and graduate students at UNMC.
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