Medical Engineering Distinguished Seminar Series, Professor Kevin Plaxco
The availability of technologies capable of tracking the levels of drugs, metabolites, and biomarkers in real time in the living body would revolutionize our understanding of health and our ability to detect and treat disease. To this end, recent years have seen the development of Electrochemical Aptamer-based (EAB) sensors, an in vivo molecular sensing strategy supporting seconds- to sub-second resolution, real-time drug and biomarker measurements. Composed of an electrode-bound, redox-reporter-modified aptamer that generates a signal via a binding-induced conformational change, EAB sensors are independent of the chemical reactivity of their targets and thus, unlike, the continuous glucose monitor, they are adaptable to any of a wide range of targets. Consistent with this, to date some two dozen drugs, metabolites, neurotransmitters, and proteins having been successfully measured in the veins, brains, and solid peripheral tissues of live animal models. In this talk, I highlight a number of advances in pharmacology and physiology enabled by this uniquely high-time-resolution, real-time window into the body's molecular status.
Biography: Kevin Plaxco, a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, holds appointments in the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry and of BioEngineering. Prior to joining UCSB in 1998, Dr. Plaxco received his Ph.D. from Caltech and performed postdoctoral studies at Oxford and the University of Washington. Dr. Plaxco's research focus is on the physics of biomolecular folding and its engineering applications. A major aim of the group's applied research is to harness the speed and specificity of folding in the development of sensors, adaptable surfaces, and smart materials. Dr. Plaxco has co-authored nearly 300 papers and two dozen patents on protein folding, protein dynamics, and folding-based sensors and materials. He serves on the scientific boards of a half dozen biotechnology firms, several of which are commercializing technologies developed by his group, and has also written a popular science book on Astrobiology. https://plaxco.chem.ucsb.edu
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