Guest Editors
Xuexiang Han
University of Pennsylvania, Department of Bioengineering
Dr. Xuexiang Han received his BS in Chemical Engineering from Shanghai University in 2014. He earned his PhD from the Department of Chemistry at Tsinghua University in 2019, which was in collaboration with National Center for Nanoscience and Technology (NCNST) of China. There he worked at the interface of biomaterials science, drug delivery and tumor microenvironment in laboratories of Dr. Yuliang Zhao (NCNST) and Dr. Guangjun Nie (NCNST). Dr. Han is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Bioengineering at University of Pennsylvania working in the laboratory of Dr. Michael J. Mitchell. He is now working on the development of lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for RNA delivery and disease prevention/treatment. Dr. Han has published over 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Nat. Commun., Nat. Protoc., Matter, J. Am. Chem. Soc., Adv. Mater., and ACS Nano.
Michael Mitchell
University of Pennsylvania, Department of Bioengineering
Dr. Michael Mitchell is the Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Institute for Translational Medicine and Therapeutics, Abramson Cancer Centre, Institute for Regenerative Medicine, and the Centre of Targeted Therapeutics and Translational Nanomedicine in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. His lab’s research lies at the interface of biomaterials science, drug delivery, and cellular and molecular bioengineering to fundamentally understand and therapeutically target biological barriers. His lab applies their research findings and the technologies developed to a range of human health applications, including cancer metastasis, immunotherapy, genome editing, and cardiovascular disease. He received a BE in Biomedical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology in 2009, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering with Prof. Michael King from Cornell University in 2014 and was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Engineering with Prof. Robert Langer at MIT from 2014-2017. He was named an American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Scholar in Cancer Research in 2016, a STAT News Wunderkind in 2017, and was the recipient of the Merck Research Advances in Delivery Science Award from the Controlled Release Society in 2017 and an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award in 2015. In 2019, he was elected Chair of the Society for Biomaterials Drug Delivery Special Interest Group. Since joining the University of Pennsylvania in 2018, Mitchell has received the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface, a Rising Star Award from the Biomedical Engineering Society, and the T. Nagai Award from the Controlled Release Society.
Collection Overview
RNA therapeutics hold the great potential to prevent and/or treat a broad range of infectious diseases, metabolic disorders, genetic disorders, and cancers. However, naked messenger RNAs, small interfering RNAs, microRNAs, and other RNA constructs are susceptible to nuclease degradation and are incapable to penetrate into the cells. Lipid and polymer are the two most popular non-viral vectors that can effectively protect RNAs, overcome biological barriers and ensure their cytosolic delivery. Many labs and pharmaceutical companies have developed their in-house lipid/polymer and established formulation procedures based on their own devices or commercially available instruments. However, there are too many variables ranging from their chemistry, formulation to in-vitro/vivo experiments, that are crucial for their development and need highly reproducible methods or techniques for further progress in this field.
The goal of this Methods Collection is to highlight various standardized and innovative methods for chemical synthesis of lipid/polymer and formulation, characterization, storage and evaluation of lipid/polymer-RNA therapeutics. These visualized and practical methods will greatly benefit researchers working with lipid/polymer-RNA formulation and largely facilitate the development of this field.
Articles
