MinJun Kim awarded NSF grant for nanosensor technology that improves gene therapy

DALLAS (SMU)—Nanotechnology expert MinJun Kim, the Robert C. Womack Endowed Chair Professor at SMU Lyle School of Engineering, and his research team have been awarded a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to design a nanosensor that can improve the accuracy of gene therapy, enabling more effective clinical trials with fewer side effects.

Gene therapy—while a promising and potentially transformative treatment for many diseases—carries risks and challenges. Modifying a person's genes is a complicated process that requires precision in the right tissue, at the right level, for the right amount of time.

More than 2,200 clinical trials related to gene therapy have been conducted since 2015. Many of those trials use liposomes, or microscopic lipid bubbles, to transport DNA into cells. For effective delivery, it's crucial to ensure that the DNA is loaded in adequate quantities and is distributed uniformly within the liposomes—which is currently a cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive process. Quality control remains a challenge.

Kim and his team will design nanosensor technology that can quantify, characterize, and validate liposome DNA content on a single-particle basis, providing unprecedented accuracy in DNA dosage that can revolutionize the effectiveness of gene therapy clinical trials in the future.

"Our vision is that the development of these nanotechnologies for biosensing will improve access to gene therapies," Kim said. "This work represents a primary step toward bio-manufacturing that could significantly reduce the cost of gene therapy treatments while ensuring high accuracy in dose control."

The project is highly interdisciplinary, involving biochemistry, gene delivery, nanofabrication, nanophotonics, and nanopore biosensing. The team hopes this work will generate excitement among undergraduate and graduate students across a broad range of STEM interests.

"Molecular characterization through nanopore-based techniques is part of the next frontier in genomics and proteomics for the coming decade," Kim said. "We believe this work will prepare students for the next step in their careers."

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under award No. 2421778.

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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