Nanomedicine and Chemical Biology

The research scope of the Nanomedicine and Chemical Biology (NCB) theme includes many aspects of drug discovery, development and delivery, with an ultimate goal to improve drug efficacy and safety. We investigate molecular mechanisms for how drugs and chemical probes interact with their targets, design and synthesize compounds that are more potent and selective, develop new technologies and ex vivo disease models for compound screening, and engineer innovative delivery systems for radiopharmaceuticals, small molecule drugs, peptides, proteins and nucleic acids to improve disease therapy and diagnosis. We also develop physiologically-based pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic models to characterize and predict in vivo drug behavior in order to determine optimal dosing regimens. Preclinical testing of the developed systems is done in-house with modern imaging methods, including ultrasound (IVUS), optical imaging (IVIS), and also quantitative radioactive SPECT, PET and CT imaging. NCB members collaborate extensively within and outside the theme on projects related to pharmacogenomics, gene therapy, gene editing and drug development.