Nanotechnology for Drug Delivery in HIV Prevention, Treatment and Cure

Time: Wednesday, September 17, 2014 - 12:00pm - 1:00pm
Type: Seminar Series
Presenter: Kim Woodrow, Assistant Professor, Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington
Room/Office: Becton Seminar
Location:
Becton Seminar Room
15 Prospect Street
New Haven, CT
United States

Yale University Department of Biomedical Engineering Special Seminar

“Nanotechnology for Drug Delivery in HIV Prevention, Treatment and Cure”

Kim Woodrow, Assistant Professor
Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington

Abstract: The delivery of drug combinations is a paradigm for treatment of HIV/AIDS, cancer and drug resistant bacterial infections. My laboratory is interested in the application of engineered nanomaterials to control the spatial and temporal delivery of a combination of agents (small molecules, biologics, conjugates). Strategies to combine chemically incompatible agents may facilitate the discovery of unique drug-drug activities, particularly unexplored combination drug synergy. In this presentation, I will summarize our efforts to develop polymeric delivery systems for the combination delivery of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs for HIV prevention, treatment and cure. ARV drug combinations have the potential to enhance the efficacy of current prevention strategies by overcoming low user adherence, and harnessing drug combinations with synergistic activity and breadth of coverage against the global diversity of HIV variants. We have developed polymeric particulate and fiber carrier systems for delivering ARV drug combinations. The flexibility to design the nanoarchitecture of these polymeric carriers, combined with the versatility of drugs that can be encapsulated for controlled release, motivate the use of these systems for topical, injectable or oral delivery of combination agents in the fight against HIV.

Biosketch: Kim A. Woodrow is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Washington since January 2010. In 2006-2009 she was a postdoctoral fellow in Biomedical Engineering at Yale University in the group of Prof. W. Mark Saltzman. She completed her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Stanford in 2006. Prof. Woodrow’s research interests focus on the application of engineered biomaterials in mucosal biology, where her lab works on the design and synthesis of biomaterials for applications in mucosal infections and mucosal immunity. Prof. Woodrow is an NIH-funded investigator, the recipient of the Creative and Novel Ideas in HIV Research (CNIHR) award from the Office of AIDS Research, a recipient of a grant from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and was awarded a 2012 NIH Director’s New Innovator Award.

When: Wednesday, Sepetember 17th, 2014
Place: Becton Seminar Room
Time: 12PM