UC San Diego

Designing a biomimetic nanoparticle is a challenging topic. Despite the advances in surface chemistry and material science, it’s still impossible to fully replicate the complex interface that presents in nature. Besides, the bottom-up method fails to prevent the exposure of foreign material when administrated in vivo. To solve this challenge, we directly fuse the natural cell membrane onto the synthetic core. This top-down method quickly generates natural stealth for the synthetic material and preserves the biofunction from the resource cell. Due to its unique properties, cell membrane coating technology displays great potential in the field of drug delivery, detoxification, vaccination and biosensing.

In my dissertation, I work on engineering multi-dimensional cell-membrane coated nanoparticles (also known as “nanosponge”) to treat bacterial infection. Instead of direct inhibiting the bacteria growth, nanosponge targets the virulence factors that bacteria secrete to subvert immune surveillance, which is known to place less evolutionary pressure to induce the antibiotic resistance. In the first thrust, antivirulence efficacy is carried out solely by biomimetic nanosponges. Two types of cell membrane from different origins are explored in this direction. In the second thrust, nanosponges are mixed with the supporting material to form a stable composite, which in turn boosts the antivirulence efficacy of the nanosponge. Together, the cell membrane coating technology offers us a great tool to solve the clinical challenges by mimicking the biological events in the natural biointerface.