Engineering Biology at the Nanoscale (RMI)

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The broad vision of the COM is to create a new paradigm for engineering Biology, especially at the molecule, membrane and cellular level. The Center's main focus will be to explore how and to what extent we can more formally map traditional engineering principles, especially component design and materials selection, onto Biology at nanoscales reverse engineering biology's products and processes; and to then forward engineering new products and processes that lead to improved treatments in health and disease. In the CDP we will bring together teams of world-class investigators at Duke, each led by team leaders, to evaluate the Nanomedicine components in four initial focus areas: Drug Delivery and Molecular Design, In Vivo Force Measurements, the Role of Inflammation in Heart Disease and Cancer, and Orthopedic Bioengineering, exploring our engineering mapping concepts onto each biological system and medical application. We have already established micro and nano probe techniques to measure important properties and performance of various molecules, membranes and cells. Taking these approaches to the next level of complexity, and using our nanoscale measurements to explore biology in vivo for particular diseased states, is the overall goal of our Nanomedicine Development Center. In our CDP workshops and discussions, we will show: 1) how we will use our mapping approaches to identify areas of expertise and expert personnel, and, importantly, areas that we do not cover, generating possible potential areas for collaboration; 2) test them against our definition of nano medicine, thereby making a list of potential areas, themes and technologies that we might offer to the CDP network; and 3) develop a full proposal that focuses on our final choice of expert themes, technologies, and disease states, creating a new body of knowledge and know-how. A particular contribution will be to offer a dedicated resource of mapping methodology that can interact with and complement the other two or three centers in this initiative.