Jenna Sloand presents her award-winning program at the Materials Research Society’s 2018 Fall Meeting and Exhibit.
Sloand receives best presentation award at MRS fall meeting
2/11/2019
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Janna Sloand, doctoral candidate in bioengineering, recently was presented with the Best Presentation Award at the Materials Research Society’s 2018 Fall Meeting and Exhibit. Sloand is advised by Scott Medina, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, and is part of the Medina Group.
Sloand’s presentation, “Template-Driven Peptide Assembly Yields Ultrasound Guided Phase-Changing Nanomaterials,” discussed a technique which she developed, termed “biofluorination,” that enables the loading of proteins into fluorine containing phase-changing nanoparticles (PCNs). She also showed how her research team used ultrasound modalities already employed in the clinic to guide and activate these fluorinated PCNs in real-time.
"Together, this creates a new class of ultrasound-guided protein PCNs that we hope will lead to the development of new therapeutic and bio-imaging strategies in precision medicine,” Medina said.
Medina and Sloand expect the new nano-materials will have broad utility across biomedicine. For example, they may help to improve the selective delivery of drugs to cancer cells, facilitate gene editing strategies to treat genetic disorders, and address challenges treating auto-immune conditions. Also, this system may allow in test animals the monitoring, tracking and regulation of biologic pathways, which are the series of molecular actions in cells that coordinate their behavior and function.
Sloand received a bachelor of arts in genetics from Rutgers University and a master of science degree in bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Sloand’s current work in the Medina Group as a doctoral candidate is focused on developing new stimuli-responsive nanomaterials for drug delivery and biomedical imaging applications.
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