Purdue nanomedicine researcher to talk at next Science on Tap event
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue biomedical engineering professor James Leary, an expert in using nanotechnology research to address health-care challenges, is the featured speaker Thursday (Nov. 18) at the next Science on Tap forum.
Leary's presentation, "Nanotechnology: " will begin at 6 p.m. in the upstairs of Lafayette Brewing Company, 622 Main St., in Lafayette. The event, sponsored by Discovery Park and the Purdue schools of Biomedical Engineering and Basic Medical Sciences, is free and open to those 21 and older.
Leary and his research team are making advancements in an area of personalized medicine by studying how nanoparticles can be used as a new type of therapy and also directed as drug-delivery capsules to seek out and penetrate individual diseased cells to repair or destroy severely damaged cells.
"Perhaps of greatest importance, nanomedical delivery of drugs could give a much better therapeutic effect at much lower doses," said Leary, the School of Veterinary Medicine Professor of Nanomedicine at Discovery Park's Birck Nanotechnology Center. "This would result in future medicine that could deliver drugs without the many, sometimes severe, side-effects described in many drug commercials."
Leary designed a technique for creating a nanoparticle with layers of therapeutic molecules. The layers peel back, and specific molecules are activated as they are needed. This bypasses the difficulty of creating a "silver bullet," or single molecule to solve everything.
By embedding biosensors within the nanoparticle that react to specific biomarkers for disease, the nanoparticles can effectively switch the treatment on or off, he said. This feedback loop enables the therapy to deliver the exact dose of medicine needed to treat only the diseased cells.
Earlier this year, Leary received the Distinguished Life Sciences Scientist Award from the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation and the U.S Chamber of Commerce for his nanomedical research accomplishments.
The Science on Tap program, organized by Purdue postdoctoral biomedical engineering researchers Kate Stuart and John Paderi, provides faculty from Purdue the opportunity to share their research activities in an informal setting and in a way that is designed to appeal to a more general audience.
Writer: Phillip Fiorini, 765-496-3133, pfiorini@purdue.edu
Sources: James Leary, 765-494-7280, jfleary@purdue.edu
Kate Stuart, 765-496-1460, kstuart@purdue.edu
John Paderi, 765-496-1460, jpaderi@purdue.edu
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