Engineering Biology at the Nanoscale (RMI)

COM的广泛愿景是为工程生物学创造一个新的范例，特别是在分子、膜和细胞水平上。该中心的主要重点将是探索如何以及在多大程度上能够更正式地将传统工程原理，特别是组件设计和材料选择，与纳米级的生物学进行反向工程生物学的产品和过程；然后推进工程新产品和过程，从而改善健康和疾病的治疗。在CDP中，我们将汇聚杜克大学的世界级研究人员团队，每个团队都由团队负责人领导，以评估四个最初重点领域的纳米医学成分：药物输送和分子设计、活体力量测量、炎症在心脏病和癌症中的作用以及整形外科 生物工程，探索我们在每个生物系统和医学应用上的工程映射概念。我们已经建立了微纳探针技术来测量各种分子、膜和细胞的重要性质和性能。将这些方法带到下一个复杂的水平，并使用我们的纳米尺度测量来探索特定疾病状态的体内生物学，这是我们纳米医学开发中心的总体目标。在我们的CDP研讨会和讨论中，我们将展示：1)我们将如何使用我们的绘图方法来确定专业知识和专家人员的领域，以及重要的是，我们没有覆盖的领域，从而产生可能的合作领域；2)根据我们对纳米医学的定义对它们进行测试，从而列出我们可能向CDP网络提供的潜在领域、主题和技术；以及3)开发一份完整的提案，重点放在我们最终选择的专家主题、技术和疾病状态上，创建一个新的机构 知识和诀窍。一个特别的贡献将是提供一个专门的绘图方法资源，可以与这一倡议中的其他两到三个中心互动并相互补充。

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.