Zhao Research Group
for Drug Delivery, Cellular Engineering, and Immunoengineering
College of Pharmacy
University of Illinois at Chicago
Research Overview
Our research group focuses on innovating drug delivery, cellular engineering, and immunoengineering technologies for solving critical clinical challenges and facilitating clinical translation toward advanced medicine. Our ultimate goal is to leverage these technologies to improve the diagnosis and treatment of a diverse spectrum of diseases including cancer, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, drug addictions, and inflammatory diseases. We explore the inspirations from intrinsic biology to fundamentally understand mechanisms underlying synthetic material-biology interactions and exploit these inspirations to develop simple but intelligent platforms for advanced therapeutics. Our research is highly multidisciplinary and collaborative, sitting at the intersections between pharmaceutical sciences, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, cancer research, and immunology. The current focuses of our group include:
Natural Cell Inspired Drug Delivery
The body's own natural cells are capable of negotiating with biological barriers and have the intrinsic capability of navigating the body and homing to hard-to-reach tissues. We aim to leverage natural or engineered cells to design the next-generation drug delivery technologies for advanced therapeutics. We are interested in developing in vitro tools to probe the mechanism governing the interactions between cells and therapeutics and to instruct rational design of drug delivery systems for designer purposes. Another focus in this research area is to innovate application-driven cellular drug delivery platforms to improve the treatment of hard-to-treat diseases, such as cancer.
Representative publications
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Zhao Z.*, Ukidve A.*, Krishnan V., Fehnel A., Pan D., Gao Y., Kim J., Evans M., Mandal A., Guo J., Muzykantov V., Mitragotri S. Systemic tumor suppression via the preferential accumulation of erythrocyte-anchored chemokine-encapsulating nanoparticles in lung metastases. Nature Biomedical Engineering 2020.
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Zhao Z.*, Ukidve A.*, Gao Y., Kim J., Mitragotri S. Erythrocyte leveraged chemotherapy (ELeCt): Nanoparticle assembly on erythrocyte surface to combat lung metastasis. Science Advances 2019, 5, eaax9250.
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Zhao Z.*, Ukidve A.*, Kim J., Mitragotri S. Targeting strategies for tissue-specific drug delivery. Cell (Cell Press) 2020, 181 (1):151-167.
Engineering of Immune Cells for Cell Therapy
Cells as living entities have emerged as a disruptive approach for treating diseases in a way that traditional therapies can't. We aim to exploit diverse engineering tools including genetic engineering, synthetic biology, genome editing, and biomaterials approaches to precisely program and deliver cell therapies for designer purposes. We are especially interested in engineering cells for immunotherapy and immunomodulation.
Representative publications
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Zhao Z.*, Pan D.*, Kim J., Qi Q., Kim J., Kapate N., Shields C.W., Kwon C., He W., Guo J., Mitragotri S. Engineering of living cells with polyphenol-functionalized biologically active nanocomplexes. Advanced Materials 2020, 2003492.
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Zhao Z.*, Ukidve A.*, Kim J., Mitragotri S. Targeting strategies for tissue-specific drug delivery. Cell (Cell Press) 2020, 181 (1):151-167.
Biomimetic and Material-Driven Immunomodulation
Fine controlling and modulating the body’s own immune system can drastically impact the pathological outcome of disease conditions and can be a significant therapeutic interventional approach. We aim to take inspiration from natural pathogens/cells that have preferable interactions with the immune system to innovate biomimetic platforms for immunomodulation applications. Specific interests in this research theme focus on nanovaccine development and its applications in immunomodulation.
Representative publications
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Zhao Z., Harris B., Hu Y., Harmon T., Pentel P., Ehrich M., Zhang C. Rational incorporation of molecular adjuvants into a hybrid nanoparticle-based nicotine vaccine for immunotherapy against nicotine addiction. Biomaterials 2018, 155: 165-175.
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Zhao Z., Hu Y., Harmon T., Pentel P., Ehrich M., Zhang C. Rationalization of a nanoparticle-based nicotine nanovaccine as an effective next-generation nicotine vaccine: A focus on hapten localization. Biomaterials 2017, 138: 46-56.
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Zhao Z., Powers K., Hu Y., Raleigh M., Pentel P., Zhang C. Engineering of a hybrid nanoparticle-based nicotine nanovaccine as a next-generation immunotherapeutic strategy against nicotine addiction: A focus on hapten density. Biomaterials 2017, 123: 107-117.