Counting Molecules, Dodging Blood Cells: Continuous, Real-Time Molecular Directly in the Living Body
Online CBE Seminar
All Spring 2020 CBE Seminars will be hosted online via Zoom. Zoom will open after the host has joined at the start of each seminar. You can ask questions through the chat forum and by raising your "hand" and the speaker will call on you. Zoom link here: https://ucsb.zoom.us/j/943297219
Speaker
Kevin Plaxco, Ph.D.
Professor and Vice Chair, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry;
Biomolecular Science and Engineering;
Mechanical Engineering
Associate Director, Center for Bioengineering
University of California, Santa Barbara
Abstract
The availability of technologies capable of tracking the levels of drugs, metabolites, and biomarkers in real time in the living body would revolutionize our understanding of health and our ability to detect and treat disease. Imagine, for example, a dosing regime that, rather than relying on your watch (“take two pills twice a day”), is instead guided by second-to-second measurements of plasma drug levels wirelessly communicated to your smartphone. Such a technology would likewise provide researchers and clinicians an unprecedented window into neurology and physiology, and could even support ultra-high-precision personalized medicine in which drug dosing is optimized minute-by-minute using closed-loop feedback control. Towards this goal, we have developed a biomimetic,electrochemical sensing platform that supports the high frequency, real-time measurement of specific molecules (irrespective of their chemical reactivity) in situ in the blood and tissues of awake, freely moving subjects.
BIO
Kevin Plaxco is a Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with shared appointments between the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and the Biomolecular Science and Engineering Graduate Program. Prof. Plaxco also serves as Associate Director of campus’s Center for Bioengineering. Prior to joining UCSB in 1998 Dr. Plaxco received his Ph.D. from Caltech and performed postdoctoral studies at Oxford and the University of Washington. Dr. Plaxco’s research focus is on the physics of biomolecular folding and its engineering applications. A major aim of the group’s applied research is to harness the speed and specificity of folding in the development of sensors, adaptable surfaces, and smart materials. Dr. Plaxco has co-authored more than 200 papers and a dozen patents on protein folding, protein dynamics, and folding-based sensors, and is recognized by Thomson Reuters at one of the most highly cited chemists of the prior decade. He serves on the scientific boards of a half dozen biotechnology firms (several of which are commercializing technologies developed by his group), and has also written a popular science book on Astrobiology.
