Prof. Daniel Griffith Anderson

The Anderson Laboratory combines biology and engineering to develop new medical devices and human therapies. One particularly important challenge is the quest to deliver drugs inside target cells in the body. Many macromolecular drugs, including DNA, RNA and certain proteins, have great therapeutic potential yet will only function when inside a cell. We have developed synthetic nanoparticles that can act like artificial viruses, delivering genetic therapies in vivo to selectively turn genes off, turn them on, or even permanently edit the genome. We are also developing new biomaterials and approaches for tissue engineering. By developing smart biomaterials that can interact appropriately with the immune system, we have made living medical devices that can secrete drugs on demand, as needed by the body, for chronic disease such as diabetes. Finally, we continue to focus our efforts towards developing next generation nanotherapeutics for cancer, by developing vaccines and methods to control immune cell function. Together, these advances have led to products that are commercialized or in clinical development, and to the foundation of companies in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and consumer products spaces.

Nano-Based Drugs, Cancer Immunology: Research is centered on developing new materials for medicine. We pioneered the use of robotic methods for the development of smart biomaterials for drug delivery and tissue engineering. Our lab has developed methods allowing rapid synthesis, formulation, analysis, and biological testing of large libraries of biomaterials for use in medical devices, cell therapy and drug delivery. One particularly important problem is the quest to develop nanoparticles that support the therapeutic delivery of drugs and macromolecules, inside of specific cell targets, in vivo. The advanced drug delivery systems we have developed provide new methods for nanoparticulate and microparticulate drug delivery, non-viral gene therapy, siRNA delivery, and vaccines.