Presenter Dr. Sufeng Zhang
Dr. Zhang is an Instructor in the Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy at the Department of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Harvard Medical School. She is also a Visiting Scientist at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her research explores strategies to integrate materials science and engineering principles with disease pathology to translate biological findings into therapies, particularly for treating chronic inflammation in the digestive system. She completed her postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer at MIT, where she developed drug delivery systems that target the inflamed intestine for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. Dr. Zhang’s research has been supported by the American Gastroenterological Association, Harvard Catalyst, BWH Gastroenterology, the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.
Abstract
A deep understanding of the diseased microenvironment is crucial for engineering disease-specific drug delivery systems. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) constitutes a group of chronic, recurrent, and incurable diseases of unknown etiology affecting the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Traditional drug delivery systems that target the entire colon have demonstrated certain benefits in addressing adverse side effects arising from systemic administration of therapies. My research instead focuses on drug delivery systems that selectively target and release drugs locally to ulcers. In this seminar, I will first discuss our Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) materials-based hydrogel microfibers that target the inflamed colon and release drugs locally upon enzymatic digestion for IBD treatment. I will also cover the in vivo assessment of the hydrogel microfibers in preclinical models of IBD and evaluation with patient biopsies. Next, I will describe a drug delivery platform using protein-based nanoparticles for drug combinations in targeting the inflamed intestine. These results laid the foundation for my ongoing work investigating stimuli-responsive polymers for strategies to improve mucosal healing in chronic GI inflammation. Finally, I will share our recent findings on the interactions between these functionalized polymers and bacteria in vivo in models of IBD. These studies highlight the potential of inflammation-targeting strategies to modulate the diseased gut microenvironment, which may open new avenues in disease treatment and regenerative medicine.