Kagya Amoako
University of New Haven, CT·Biomedical Engineering
Tiny particles injected into the bloodstream can carry drugs straight to diseased tissue. However, these nanoparticles often behave unpredictably once they meet blood.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Engineering
Materials Science
- Topics
lipid nanoparticles
nanomedicine
drug delivery
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2029
What they work on
- Formulate and characterize a library of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) varying in size, charge, PEGylation (a polyethylene glycol coating), and surface ligand chemistry, and determine how these properties change binding to platelets, white cells, red cells, and plasma proteins.
- Quantify nanoparticle binding to blood elements under shear forces typical of human circulation, using a custom-designed whole-blood flow loop, to capture binding that static tests miss.
- Develop and validate a random forest regression model, a machine-learning method, that predicts nanoparticle-blood binding profiles from formulation parameters, to guide future nanoparticle design.
More about the research
They stick to platelets (clotting cells), leukocytes (white blood cells), erythrocytes (red blood cells), and plasma proteins. These unwanted interactions are a major reason nanoparticle drugs struggle to reach patients. This project aims to work out the rules linking how a nanoparticle is built to what it binds in flowing blood. It will then turn those rules into a computer model that predicts binding before a particle is ever made.
Why it matters
Unpredictable sticking of nanoparticles to blood cells and proteins limits the safety and effectiveness of nanoparticle medicines. A validated model that predicts these interactions from a particle's design could help developers choose blood-compatible lipid nanoparticle formulations earlier. That could improve drug delivery for patients with cardiovascular disease, cancer, and inflammatory diseases.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Qiaobing Xu
Tufts University, MA·Biomedical Engineering
Covalently attach a ligand that binds the target protein onto an E3 ligase-related protein, creating a two-part degrader that avoids the PROTAC hook effect.
Thomas Binns
Yale University, CT·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Determine how PACE nanoparticle size, charge, stiffness, surface hydrophobicity and dose affect uptake by specific phagocyte subgroups in the liver and spleen of healthy mice, using highly multiplexed flow cytometry.
Zhongjun Wu
University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD·Biomedical Engineering
Characterize how high mechanical shear stress changes neutrophil structure, rolling and adhesion, and surface markers, and quantify how structural damage scales with stress levels found in VADs and ECMO.
The school
University of New Haven: 1 labs on PI Pages, $6M a year on research, 1 research doctorates a year.
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