Dongsook Chang Chemical Engineering Grad Student M.S. in Interdisciplinary Program in Bioengineering, Seoul National University, Korea B.S. in Chemical and Biological Engineering, Seoul National University, Korea Hobbies: watching movies

Linear-Dendritic Block Copolymers for Targeted Drug Delivery

Spatial arrangement of targeting ligands on drug delivery carriers is proven to have significant effects on targeting cancer cells. Our linear-dendritic block copolymer system enables to control the spatial arrangement of ligands on nanoparticle in nanometer scale in a precise manner. Previous study in our lab using folate receptor and folate as a model receptor-ligand system has demonstrated that specific cluster arrangement exists for the best targeting at a given total number of ligands on surface. It shows the possibility of improving binding to and internalization by cancer cells at a given ligand concentration, distinguished by multivalency effect.

My research focus lies on EGFR (Epidermal growth factor receptor) which plays an important role in cancer cell survival, proliferation, metastasis and angiogenesis. More relevantly, down-regulation of EGFR by treatment of a certain combination of antibodies was reported and it can be attributed to decreased rate of receptor recycling. The questions to answer will include how ligand clustering can improve the binding and uptake of targeting vehicle, how EGFR clustering is induced by clustered ligands, and whether the clustering can be used as a means of down-regulating EGFR on the cancer cell surface using EGFR specific peptide ligand and linear-dendritic copolymer system.