BATS

Date/Time: 

Apr 6, 2018 - 12:00 PM EDT

Title: 

Charge Optimized Nanocarriers Provide Targeted, Sustained Delivery of Drugs to Cartilage

Abstract: 

Treatment of osteoarthritis is hindered by poor drug delivery to cartilage, even when drugs are directly injected into the affected joint. Here, I describe a nanocarrier-drug conjugate system selected for optimal charge to bind and penetrate cartilage, resulting in a 10x improvement in rat joint residence time versus the free drug. The improved drug delivery provided by this system resulted in significantly reduced bone and cartilage degeneration in a rat surgical model of osteoarthritis relative to untreated rats.

Title: 

Targeting FOXA1 to Reprogram Aberrant Hormone Receptors

Abstract: 

FOXA1 is a potential therapeutic target in hormone-dependent cancers due to its cis-acting role in hormone receptor activity; however, the therapeutic relevance of the target is not well characterized due to a lack of pharmacologically tractable tools for modulating FOXA1 activity. This talk will discuss the challenges in developing small molecule chemical probes for FOXA1 and our efforts to overcome these challenges in order to understand the therapeutic opportunity for targeting FOXA1 in disease.