CAREER: Histone-Mimetic Gold Nanoparticles as Self-Activating and Tailorable Gene Delivery Scaffolds

该职业奖由特拉华大学材料研究部生物材料项目授予，旨在研究一种新型的、自激活的基因传递平台，该平台将自组装单层功能化纳米金颗粒与附着的仿生和核特异性解包装肽结合起来。凭借该奖项，米利森特·沙利文博士将合成和表征用三甲基化组蛋白尾部（H3K4Me3）修饰的仿组蛋白金纳米颗粒（HMGNs）。这些纳米颗粒与质粒DNA的自组装将是这个项目的另一部分。该项目的最终潜在目标是创造含有组蛋白尾部组合的HMGN，以优化HMGN/DNA纳米复合物的核特异性转录激活。这个项目，如果成功，可以开发一个综合的基因治疗支架和一个通用的基因/药物输送系统针对细胞核。该项目的目标之一是将研究活动与特拉华大学研究生和本科生的教学、培训和教育相结合。该项目的外联部分涉及高中学生及其教师的参与。当地的高中教师将被挑选出来并接受培训。作为生物工程课程模块的教学实习生，这些教师将反过来为高中生提供培训和实习。此外，这些高中生和教师将由本科生和研究生共同指导。

0746458SullivanThis Career award to University of Delaware by the Biomaterials program in the Division of Materials Research is to study a novel, self-activating gene delivery platform by combining self-assembled monolayer-functionalized with nanogold particles with attached biomimetic and nucleus-specific unpackaging peptides. With this award, Dr. Millicent Sullivan will synthesize and characterize histone-mimetic gold nanoparticles (HMGNs) modified with trimethylated histone tails (H3K4Me3). Self-assembly of these nanoparticles with plasmid DNA will be the other part of this project. The ultimate potential goal of this project is to create HMGNs containing combinations of histone tails that optimize nucleus-specific transcriptional activation of HMGN/DNA nanocomplexes. This project, if successful, could develop an integrated gene therapy scaffold and a generic gene/drug delivery system targeted to the nucleus of the cell.One of the objectives of this project is to integrate research activities with teaching, training and education of graduate and undergraduate students at University of Delaware. The outreach component of the project involves the participation of high school students and their teachers. Local high school teachers will be selected and trained at the researcher?s laboratory as teaching interns in bioengineering course module, and these teachers in turn will provide training and internship to high school students. In addition, these high school students and teachers will be co-mentored by undergraduate and graduate students.