Category: Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics
Mucommune Receives Over $3M to Advance Muco-Trapping Antibodies
March 20, 2019Mucommune LLC has been awarded over $3 million in five separate federal grants over the past several months to advance its muco-trapping antibody technology. The company was launched in 2016 by Sam Lai, Ph.D., an associate professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. The muco-trapping antibody technology advanced by Mucommune is based on engineering the Fc region of IgG antibodies to interact with mucins. Tuning the Fc region to combine with mucins enables antibodies to immobilize viral and bacterial pathogens in different mucosal secretions, including respiratory airways, GI tract and female reproductive tract. Once the pathogens are trapped in … Read more
Gurysh Receives NIH F32 Grant for Brain Cancer Research
March 18, 2019Elizabeth Gurysh, Ph.D., received a National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health to support her brain cancer research. Gurysh is a postdoctoral researcher working in the lab of Kristy Ainslie, Ph.D., at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Ainslie is an associate professor in the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics. Gurysh is researching a combination therapy of stem cells and drug-eluting scaffolds to prevent recurrence of glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer. Glioblastoma is usually treated with surgery followed by radiation or chemotherapy. However, due to glioblastoma’s tentacle-like growth, it is extremely … Read more
Anthony Hickey Named Director of UNC Catalyst for Rare Diseases
January 29, 2019Anthony Hickey, Ph.D., has returned to the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy to head up the UNC Catalyst for Rare Diseases. Hickey, a professor in the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics from 1993 until 2010, returns to the School after a stint at the Research Triangle Institute, where he was program director in inhaled therapeutics at the Center for Aerosol and Nanomaterials Engineering. Hickey earned his Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences from Aston University in Birmingham, U.K. After five years on faculty at the University of Illinois at Chicago, he came to the School in 1993. Hickey is the founder … Read more
Anselmo Wins Pharmaceutics Young Investigator Award
January 14, 2019Aaron Anselmo, Ph.D., has been named the 2018 Young Investigator Award winner by Pharmaceutics. Anselmo is an assistant professor in the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. His research focuses on developing pharmaceutics-based approaches to deliver therapeutic bacteria, combining pharmaceutics fundamentals to inform the engineering of new delivery systems for the microbiota. This work overlaps microbiology and microbe ecology, pharmaceutics, engineering and drug delivery to develop new strategies for treating microbiota-related disorders. Anselmo received his B.S. degree in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the … Read more
Anselmo Authors Review of Biologics Delivery Strategies
December 5, 2018Biological pharmaceutical products are becoming increasingly utilized in the clinic, setting off corresponding changes in the development of drug delivery technologies, according to a new paper from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. The review, written by Aaron Anselmo, Ph.D., and collaborators, was published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery on Nov. 30. Anselmo is an assistant professor in the School’s Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics. His paper, “Non-Invasive Delivery Strategies for Biologics,” assesses the academic and industry efforts to develop new delivery strategies for biologics. Biologics represent the cutting edge of biomedical research, and have a much broader range … Read more
Huang, Kabanov and Roth Recognized for Research Influence
November 28, 2018Three faculty members from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy were recognized on the Clarivate Analytics list of Highly Cited Researchers for 2018. Leaf Huang, Ph.D., Alexander Kabanov, Ph.D., Dr.Sci., and Bryan Roth, Ph.D., M.D., were among 6,000 scientists worldwide and across all fields who were recognized for their influence, through the publication of multiple highly cited papers, over the last decade. Huang, Kabanov and Roth were three of the 34 UNC-Chapel Hill scientists recognized. Huang is a Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor, who joined the School’s faculty in 2005. He has published over 380 peer-reviewed articles, over 160 invited reviews … Read more
UNC Researchers Develop Platform for Universal Flu Vaccine
November 5, 2018Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are developing a universal flu vaccine which could be effective against multiple influenza strains and in multiple flu seasons. In the United States, up to 35.6 million people become infected with the flu each year, resulting in up to 710,000 hospitalizations and 56,000 flu related deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The effectiveness of seasonal flu vaccines can vary from year to year — with some years, such as 2004, as low as 10 percent efficacy. In a study published by the Journal of Controlled Release, … Read more
Ainslie Awarded $1.89M NIH Grant to Develop Multiple Sclerosis Vaccine
October 16, 2018The National Institutes of Health awarded a grant of nearly $2 million to Kristy Ainslie, Ph.D., for a proposal to develop a therapeutic vaccine for multiple sclerosis. Ainslie is an associate professor in the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, as well as an adjunct associate professor in the UNC Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. She said the project’s long-term goal is to design a biodegradable, tunable particle system to serve as a therapeutic vaccine to alleviate multiple sclerosis. Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the central … Read more
Hingtgen Awarded UNC Hettleman Prize for Young Faculty
October 12, 2018Shawn Hingtgen, Ph.D., was awarded the Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Hingtgen is an associate professor at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics. His research harnesses the potential of stem cells to develop new and better methods for treating terminal cancer. Working closely with an interdisciplinary team of researchers and clinicians, Hingtgen showed how skin cells could be flipped into stem cells that hunt down and deliver cancer-killing drugs to glioblastoma, the deadliest malignant brain … Read more
Stem Cells Show Promise as Drug Delivery Tool for Childhood Brain Cancer
August 28, 2018The latest in a series of laboratory breakthroughs could lead to a more effective way to treat the most common brain cancer in children. Scientists from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center reported results from early studies that demonstrate how cancer-hunting stem cells, developed from skin cells, can track down and deliver a drug to destroy medulloblastoma cells hiding after surgery. Previously, UNC Lineberger’s Shawn Hingtgen, PhD, and his collaborators showed in preclinical studies they could flip skin cells into stem cells that hunt and deliver cancer-killing drugs to glioblastoma, the deadliest … Read more