USC Researchers Use Nanoparticles to Target Kidneys

Professor Eun Ji Chung
Gabilan Assistant Professor Eun Ji Chung, Photo: Viterbi Staff

In an exciting cross-collaboration, researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and the Keck School of Medicine have created tiny nanoparticles, known as micelles, to target diseased kidney cells. Made with an ingenious kidney-targeting peptide, these biocompatible and biodegradable micelles can pass into the kidney and remain there, with the potential to deliver life-saving drugs where they are needed most. This groundbreaking study appeared in the journal Nano Research, which recently selected lead author Eun Ji Chung, Ph.D., as a Young Innovator in Nanobiotechnology. Dr. Chung is a WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, and Nephrology and Hypertension at USC and a professor in the new USC Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience, where she runs the Chung Lab.

UKRO congratulates the entire research team, which along with Dr. Chung, includes Jonathan Wang, Christopher Poon, Deborah Chin, Sarah Milkowski, and Vivian Lu at the Viterbi School of Engineering; and Kenneth R. Hallows of the Keck School of Medicine at USC and the USC/UKRO Kidney Research Center. We are thrilled to see this type of interdisciplinary research taking place across different schools and centers at USC and we look forward to many more collaborations to fight kidney disease from every angle.

Sources:

This Tiny Particle Might Change Millions of Lives, EurekAlert, August 21, 2018

Design and in vivo characterization of kidney-targeting multimodal micelles for renal drug delivery, Nano Research, June 6, 2018

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