Ashutosh Chilkoti, Ph.D.
Theo Pilkington Chair, Biomedical Engineering, Duke University
Ashutosh Chilkoti is the Theo Pilkington Chair in Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. Prof. Chilkoti was awarded the CAREER award by the National Science Foundation in 1998, the 3M non-tenured faculty award in 2002, and was awarded the Distinguished Research Award from the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University in 2003 and in 2005. He was awarded a senior researcher award by the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation in 2010, the Clemson Award for Contributions to the Literature by the Society for Biomaterials in 2011, and the 2013 Robert A. Pritzker Distinguished Lecture award by the Biomedical Engineering Society. He is currently the Director of the Center for Biologically Inspired Materials and Materials Systems at Duke University. His areas of research include Biomolecular Engineering with a focus on stimulus responsive biopolymers for applications in protein purification and drug delivery, and Biointerface Science, with a focus on the development of clinical diagnostics and plasmonic biosensors. He has co-authored over 200 publications, has been cited ~12,000 times, has an H-index of 64, and has 17 patents awarded and 31 in process. He is the founder of a start-up company, PhaseBio Pharmaceuticals that has raised $65 million in venture capital funding and is taking drug delivery technology that he developed into clinical trials. He serves on the Editorial Board of five journals, and is a reviewer for over 20 other journals.
Topic: Solving Drug Delivery Problems by Genetically Engineered Polypeptides
Abstract:
This talk will highlight two orthogonal designs –nanoparticles and gels– of genetically engineered thermally sensitive polypeptides for drug delivery in two widely different therapeutic arenas –cancer and type-2 diabetes. In the first example, I will discuss the design of drug-loaded nanoparticles of elastin-like polypeptides (ELPs) for systemic delivery of anti-cancer chemotherapeutics by their attachment-triggered encapsulation. This approach has great utility to increase the solubility, plasma-half-life and tumor accumulation of cancer chemotherapeutics. I will demonstrate the efficacy of this approach with two cancer drugs, doxorubicin and paclitaxel. In another example of the utility of ELPs for cancer drug delivery, we have also designed diblock ELPs that self-assemble into monodisperse micelles in response to a thermal trigger, wherein self-assembly in the narrow temperature range between 37 ºC and 42 ºC (highest temperature approved for mild clinical hyperthermia) results in the presentation of a functional cell penetrating peptide (CPP) motif. This converts CPPs, which are powerful yet promiscuous at promoting uptake of drugs into cells, into a targeted system for cancer drug delivery. The second half of the presentation will focus on the delivery of peptide drugs, as they are an exciting class of pharmaceuticals currently in development for the treatment of a variety of diseases; however, their main drawback is a short half-life, which dictates multiple and frequent injections. We have developed a novel peptide delivery approach –Protease Operated Depots (PODs)– to provide sustained and tunable release of a peptide drug from an injectable s.c. depot. Remarkably, a single injection of GLP-1 PODs is able to reduce blood glucose levels in mice for up to 5 days, 120 times longer than an injection of the native peptide drug. These findings suggest that PODs may offer a cost effective and genetically encoded alternative to polymer encapsulation schemes for sustained delivery of peptide therapeutics.
Venue: Room143, New Biology Building, THU
Time: June 4 (Tuesday), 2013; 16:30
Host: Prof. Weiping Gao
