ABSTRACT:

When creating new medical technologies, the entire design and production process must be considered.  In this seminar, the steps taken to translate the needs of a multidisciplinary team of engineers, clinicians and immunologists into therapeutic nucleic acid-based technologies will be highlighted.  The first half will focus on the design and pre-clinical translation of nanomaterials for therapeutic RNA delivery to blood vessels (vascular endothelial cells) in nonhuman primates.  The second half will examine the ways in which nanotechnology can be designed to deliver new self-amplifying nucleic acid payloads for the rapid-response vaccination of evolving pathogens such as Ebola virus, influenza and parasitic microorganisms. 

BIO:

Dr. Omar F. Khan is currently a postdoctoral associate in the labs of Professors Robert Langer and Daniel Anderson at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Previously, while earning his bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto, he completed a year-long work term at a petrochemical refinery.  After receiving the Society of Chemical Industry Merit Award, he completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Professor Michael V. Sefton.  As a graduate student, he studied the effect of implant surface chemistry on the progression of the fibrotic response and devised new technologies for the rapid bottom-up assembly of vascularized tissues.  As a postdoctoral associate, Omar created new nanomaterials for targeted RNA delivery in the body, invented a fully synthetic vaccine system using customized nanotechnology platforms and has synthesized new angiogenesis-inducing biomedical polymers for transplantation therapies.  Omar spends his free time biking, swimming and traveling.