James Bishop has been awarded a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship! This competitive grant is awarded by the NIH on a national basis for highly promising postdoctoral candidates to support their potential to become productive, independent investigators in scientific health-related research fields. He will be working on drug uncaging technologies to alleviate chronic pain.
Tommaso Di Ianni was awarded a School of Medicine Dean’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, a highly competitive fellowship to support young investigators in the first two years of their postdoctoral research training. Tommaso is working on designing ultrasound transducers that will enable behavioral studies in awake freely-moving animals, along with functional ultrasound to imaging brain activity in real time.
Daivik Vyas has been rewarded a MedScholars Fellowship to conduct research on using ultrasound to modulate the glymphatic system for drug delivery. The MedScholars program provides funding for Stanford medical students to conduct research in basic, clinical, and translational settings.
Jeff Wang has been rewarded a Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellowship (SIGF) to characterize whole-brain oscillatory, metabolic, and behavioral changes associated with localized ketamine uncaging. The SIGF is a competitive, university-wide award given to doctoral students engaged in interdisciplinary research in humanities, social sciences, basic sciences, and engineering.
Congrats again to all!
Here, we show that nanoparticle-mediated ultrasonic drug uncaging is generalizable to a wide range of hydrophobic drugs and also demonstrate the needed stability and drug loading for clinical translation. Given this wide range of drugs, we have the potential to potentially treat diseases as wide-ranging as cancer, neuropsychiatric disorders, and stroke. The paper can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0142961219301656?via%3Dihub.
Dr. Jeffrey Wang has been accepted into the Mind, Brain, Computation and Technology graduate training program where he will be expected to engage as a contributing member of the community, attend center seminars and the annual trainee meetings, present his work to the community, and to take an active role in assisting with ongoing center events, or in developing new ways to strengthen and enrich the community.
For this program, Jeff had to pass through a competitive application process that involved essentially having to complete a second qualifying examination to demonstrate his knowledge and aptitude regarding quantitative techniques, and to defend his thesis proposal on defining a spatiotemporally resolved model for the physiological action of ketamine using ultrasonic drug uncaging. Congratulations, Jeffrey!
In April 2018, the NIH/NCI Nanoparticle Characterization Laboratory (NCL) accepted our propofol-loaded polymeric perfluorocarbon nanoemulsions into their characterization and testing program, which is designed to promote the clinical translation of novel nanomedicines. These propofol-loaded nanoparticles will now undergo their rigorous in vitro and in vivo evaluation. If these particles pass the NCL assays with acceptable results, we plan to apply for an investigatory license from the FDA for first-in-human trials to complete noninvasive functional brain mapping as part of neurologic and neurosurgical evaluations.
https://nanolab.cancer.gov/sites/default/files/May%202018.pdf
Congrats Qian and Jason! Their manuscript entitled “Polymeric perfluorocarbon nanoemulsions are ultrasound-activated wireless drug infusion catheters” is currently available on the preprint server bioRxiv at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/09/10/315044.
This work developed polymeric perfluoropentane nanoemulsion as a generalized platform for localized ultrasonic drug delivery. They showed that this nanotechnology platform can be used to encapsulate most hydrophobic drugs. The nanoemulsions have shown excellent ultrasound responsiveness and bioeffects for a wide variety of drugs, and demonstrated a stability that yields high potential for clinical translation for noninvasive ultrasonic drug uncaging in the brain and body.
Dr. Raag Airan, an Assistant Professor of Radiology (Neuroradiology), has received the American Society for Clinical Investigation 2018 Young Physician-Scientist Award. He will present his research at the AAP/ASCI/APSA Joint Meeting in Chicago, Illinois, April 20-22.
The ASCI Council Young Physician-Scientist Award recognizes physician-scientists who are early in their first faculty appointment and have made notable achievements in their research. With these awards, the ASCI seeks to encourage and inspire these physician-scientists through their participation in the Joint Meeting.
Congratulations, Dr. Airan!
Our work on using ultrasonic drug uncaging to enable neuromodulation was just profiled in Nature.
Check it out!
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-05479-7
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