Gene therapy has the potential to completely change the way we treat diseases, but not until we figure out the ‘delivery problem’. Because of the diverse nature of human diseases, it is likely that there won’t be a one-size-fits-all solution.
The Laboratory of Biomolecular Engineering and Nanomedicine (LIBN) will approach the delivery problem from a different angle. We will take a bottom-up approach and engineer minimal RNA nanocarriers inspired by how viral nucleic acid-protein assemblies transport their genomes into cells and harness this knowledge for delivery.
Our vision is that recreating the evolutionary processes that allowed viruses to deliver their genomes into cells will provide us with the tools to deliver life-saving medicines to exactly the right organ or tissue in the patient’s body.
Keywords: protein design, biomolecular engineering, directed evolution, drug delivery, RNA delivery, chemical biology
