Our principal research focus is on Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine. It encompasses mechanistic understanding of biological and pathological phenomena at the cellular, sub-cellular and biomolecular levels, and utilizing this knowledge to create bioinspired therapeutic and diagnostic technologies to interrogate, support, or treat the various phenomena. To this end, our laboratory focuses on understanding the complex pathophysiological mechanisms of cardiovascular diseases and cancer, and then on using this insight to develop disease-targeted therapeutic strategies by integrating critical physical, chemical and biological components at nano-to-micro scales. Our main research interests are in the areas of (i) novel biomaterials to modulate biologic interactions and responses, and (ii) drug formulation and disease-targeted drug delivery systems. The physiological and pathological areas we focus on are hemostasis, thrombosis, inflammation, immune response and cancer metastasis. The tools that we use are biochemical properties like disease-relevant heteromultivalent ligand-receptor interactions, integrated with biophysical attributes of biomaterial platforms like shape, size, charge and morphology), to create customizable and translatable targeted drug delivery technologies.
