Achievement

It has been long recognized that the pharmacological properties of conventional "free" drugs can be improved through their targeted delivery using nanocarriers. Carlee Ashley's PhD research initiated a collaborative effort between faculty in the Chemical Engineering Department and UNM's School of Medicine. This interdisciplinary project has yielded a completely novel nanocarrier platform that enables highly specific delivery of diagnostic and therapeutic agents to human cancer cells without affecting the viability of other cells. Carlee developed two novel nanoscale systems for targeted delivery applications: silica nanoparticle-supported "protocells" and virus-like particles (VLPs). Targeted delivery was developed from random peptide display from a complex library to enable selection of high affinity targeting peptides. These nanocarriers have shown to a nanomolar affinity for Hep3B and HepG2.