Huiliang Wang
University of Texas at Austin, TX·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
The brain is hard to reach. Light used to switch neurons on or off usually requires a surgically implanted optical fiber, and most drugs cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, the tight lining of brain blood vessels that blocks most substances.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Materials Science
Neuroscience
- Topics
hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks
nanoparticles
focused ultrasound
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through May 2029
What they work on
- Design biodegradable organic nanoparticles, including hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs), that convert focused ultrasound into several colors of light, enabling control of multiple light-sensitive proteins without implanted optical fibers.
- Improve delivery of plasmid DNA, circular DNA carrying a gene, into the cell nucleus using covalent chemical assembly strategies, as a non-viral route to express optogenetic proteins.
- Engineer cationic polymers that boost cellular uptake, endosome escape and diffusion through extracellular space, to make non-viral gene delivery more effective.
- Build an ultrasound-activated emission platform of luminophores inside HOF nanoparticles, changing the inner molecules to tune emitted color for multi-colored opsins in sono-optogenetics.
- Program ultrasound-triggered drug release for chemogenetics by tuning cohesive energy in HOF nanoparticles through the number of hydrogen bonds and pi-pi stacking interactions.
- Assess translation potential of ultrasound-cleavable HOF nanoparticles for spatially controlled drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier, using I-Corps interviews and investigation of the industry ecosystem.
More about the research
These projects ask whether focused ultrasound, sound waves that pass through the skull and can be aimed at a small spot, can serve as a remote trigger instead. The trigger acts on nanoparticles injected into the bloodstream that emit light or release a drug when ultrasound reaches them. The particles are built from hydrogen-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs), crystals of organic molecules held together by hydrogen bonds, whose chemistry can be adjusted building block by building block.
Why it matters
Brain treatments are limited because drugs often cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, or cause side effects at the doses needed to reach the brain. Ultrasound-triggered nanoparticles could release drugs only in targeted brain regions while sparing healthy tissue, which may support safer therapies for central nervous system disorders. For neuroscience, light delivered without surgery and genes delivered without viruses could make controlling specific neurons easier and less damaging.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
CAREER: Hydrogen-Bonded Organic Frameworks Nanoparticles for Ultrasound-Activated, Genetically-Targeted Neuromodulation
NSF · Jun 2024 – May 2029
I-Corps: Translation Potential of an Ultrasound-Triggered Drug Delivery to the Brain
NSF · Sep 2026 – Aug 2027
Non-Invasive and Non-Viral Sono-Optogenetics
NIH · Aug 2022 – Jun 2027
Closest labs
Chenfeng Ke
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Chemistry
Construct HCOFs from rigid macrocycles and organic cages with built-in recognition sites to selectively bind molecules of similar size and control solid-state assembly.
Jagdish Singh
North Dakota State University, ND·Pharmacology
Synthesize liposomal nanoparticles and omega-3-fatty-acid-grafted chitosan nanomicelles carrying plasmid DNA for VGF, surface-modified with transferrin, mannose and cell-penetrating peptides, and characterize size, charge, uptake, transfection and toxicity.
Jin Kim Montclare
New York University, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Expand a library of positively charged supercharged proteins with virus-derived tags to help siRNA particles escape endosomes, the membrane bubbles that trap cargo inside cells, while keeping strong RNA binding, using computationally informed design.
The school
University of Texas at Austin: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.1B a year on research, 871 research doctorates a year.
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