September 13, 2018
Doctoral candidate receives first-place award at annual biopharmaceutical symposium
Tuyen Nguyen, a doctoral candidate in the chemistry department, received a first-place award for her oral presentation at the fifth annual Biopharmaceutical Research and Development Symposium Sept. 5-6 in Omaha, Nebraska.
Nguyen, working under the supervision of Professor Santosh Aryal at the Nanotechnology Center of Kansas State, or NICKS, presented an engineering of biomimetic nanoconstruct, inspired from immune cells to delivery toxic chemo drug to the breast cancer.
Cancer is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality with 4,750 new cases and 1,670 death every day in the U.S. alone. Therefore, there is an urgent need to revisit existing therapeutics and/or develop new diagnostic and therapeutic tools. Nguyen and Aryal are working to search for better options to fight against cancer. In this regard, they are learning self-defense systems of the body, so-called immune system, to design novel drug delivery device to precisely target cancer.
The Biopharmaceutical Research and Development Symposium is an annual meeting organized by the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The symposium highlights the current state of the art and practices in pharmaceutical industries in the discovery and development of immunotherapy for human diseases.