October 2, 2023
Juliane Nguyen, Ph.D., is studying how exosomal ribonucleic acid (RNA) cargo contributes to progression in cancer and other diseases. Nguyen is a professor and vice chair in the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She also serves as director of graduate admissions.
Nguyen will continue this research through a $1.6 million research project grant (R01) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This research project is in collaboration with Klaus Hahn, Ph.D., Ronald G. Thurman Distinguished Professor in Pharmacology at the UNC School of Medicine.
RNA is a molecule that is present in the majority of living organisms and viruses and exosomes are extracellular vesicles generated by all cells. Exosomes are released from healthy and tumor cells into blood circulation.
In Nguyen and Hahn’s project proposal, they share that at any given time, humans secrete millions of exosomes in the body and studies have shown that exosomes contribute to the progression of cancer and metastasis. Cancer cells can secrete up to 100 times more exosomes that help promote tumor growth and its spread throughout the body than normal cells.
“Right now, we don’t fully understand how exosomal RNA cargo contributes to disease progression,” said Nguyen. “Being able to track exosomal RNA and understand how it contributes to cancer will help us design more powerful and effective therapeutics against cancer.”
Current methods of tracking exosomes are typically designed to detect exosomal lipids or proteins but not exosomal RNA. The overall goal of this project is to develop genetically encodable RNA EXO-Code probes that allow multimodal tracking and imaging of exosomal RNAs. This will enable researchers to track them through organs and tissues, cells and their ultimate destinations within subcellular compartments.
Nguyen leads an interdisciplinary lab to develop innovative and personalize biotherapeutics for cancer and other diseases by merging molecular engineering with pharmaceutical sciences and bioinformatics.
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