Dr. Adah Almutairi: Biomaterials to detect, treat, and prevent disease

Research Summary: Biomaterials to detect, treat, and prevent disease

Dr. Almutairi’s laboratory interests lie in utilizing and advancing Nanotechnology to detect, treat and prevent diseases mitigating their huge social and economic costs. Rapid advances in nanotechnology and more specifically macromolecular engineering have enabled the development of more sophisticated tools to bear on many medical challenges. Over the last decade, the medical community has made widespread use of synthetic polymeric nanosystems to overcome biological barriers and expand the detection, treatment and prevention of disease. Today there remains a large and unmet need for materials to enable these medical technologies. These complex interdisciplinary problems require the development of ‘smart’ or ‘sensing’ materials, chemistries, and formulations, capable of performing more sophisticated functions.

We aim to capitalize on two novel and patent pending technologies developed in our labs at UCSD to enable:

1. Early diagnosis of disease:
   Polymeric nanoprobes with a linear dual response mechanism to detect cancer and cardiovascular disease.
2. New avenues for treatment:
   Chemically amplified strategies for stem cell therapy.
3. Prevent infectious disease:
   Smart and modular nanocarriers of multi component vaccines.

Academic Achievements

Education: A.B. in Chemistry (2000) Occidental College; Ph.D. in Chemistry (2005) University of California, Riverside, Postdoctoral Studies in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (2005-2008) University of California, Berkeley.

Awards and Honors: NIH Director New Innovator Award (2009); Thieme Chemistry Journal Award (2009), PhRMA Foundation Award (2009); UC Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow (2005); UC
Dissertation Fellowship Award (2004); Rodna P. Nye Scholar (1997).

Leadership Experience: Co-Director of the UCSD- KACST Center of Excellence in Nanomedicine.

Teaching

• Medical Device Materials guest lecturer (MATS 258/MAE 250).
• Pharmacokinetics Conference Facilitator (SOM 217A).
• Frontiers in Therapeutic and Diagnostic Deliver (SOP 257/MSE 254).

Key Contributions to Pharmaceutical Sciences

• Developed a novel and effective nanoprobe to detect angiogenesis.
• Developed two novel fluorescent nanoprobes with on/off switching of both intensity and lifetime to elucidate metabolic diseases.
• Developed a cell penetrating microparticle loaded with biopharmaceuticals.

Selected Recent Publications (from >10 peer-

reviewed articles)

Almutairi et al. (2008). Biodegradable nanoprobes for functional fluorescence lifetime imaging in vivo. Molecular Pharmaceutics, 5:1103–1110.

Almutairi et al. (2008). Biodegradable pH sensing dendritic nanoprobes for near infrared fluorescence lifetime and intensity imaging. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 130:444-445.

Cohen et al. (2008). Enhanced cell penetration of acid degradable particles functionalized with cell penetrating peptides. Bioconjugate Chemistry, 19: 876-881.

Almutairi et al. (2009). Biodegradable dendritic nanoprobes for non invasive positron emission tomography imaging of angiogenesis. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106:685-690.

Potential Collaborative Programs with the Pharmaceutical Industry

Ten years of expertise in applied materials chemistry. Diverse array of laboratory approaches towards design, synthesis, characterization and testing of biomaterials in cells and animals.