Our group focuses on designing and synthesizing new materials to address biomedical problems. We are currently developing new delivery systems for biologics including nucleic acids, proteins, peptides, and inactivated viruses to improve their efficacy, safety, and compliance. We are also interested in developing polymeric scaffolds for immune engineering and long-term monitoring of chronic diseases. Our goal is not only answering fundamental questions in chemistry and material science, but also using our materials to help patients in the real world. Our current projects are listed below.

1. Delivery systems of small molecule drugs for cancer immunotherapy

» Lu, X.^†; Miao, L.^†; Gao, W.; Chen, Z.; McHugh, K.; Sun, Y.; Tochka, Z.; Tomasic, S.; Sadtler, K.; Hyacinthe, A.; Huang, Y.; Graf, T.; Hu, Q.; Sarmadi, M.; Langer, R.; Anderson, D.; Jaklenec, A. Engineered PLGA microparticles for long-term, pulsatile release of STING agonist for cancer immunotherapy. Sci. Transl. Med. 2020, 12, eaaz6606.

2.Delivery systems of biologics

» Lu, X.; Tran, T.H.; Jia, F.; Tan, X.; Davis, S.; Krishnan, S.; Amiji, M.M.; Zhang, K.* Providing oligonucleotides with steric selectivity by brush polymer-assisted compaction. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 12466-12469.

» Lu, X.; Jia, F.; Tan, X.; Wang, D.; Cao, X.; Zheng, J.; Zhang, K.* Effective antisense gene regulation via non-cationic, polyethylene glycol brushes. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2016, 138, 9097-9100.

»  Wang, D.; Lin, J.; Jia, F.; Tan, X.; Wang, Y.; Sun, X.; Cao, X.; Che, F.; Lu, H.; Gao, X.; Shimkonis, J.C.; Nyoni, Z.; Lu, X.*; Zhang, K.* Bottlebrush-architectured poly (ethylene glycol) as an efficient vector for RNA interference in vivo. Sci. Adv. 2019, 5, eaav9322.

3. Monitoring systems for chronic diseases