About Yanxi
- Advisor: Irene Chan
- Department: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
- Campus: UCLA
- BioPACIFIC MIP Research: SET 1 - Bioderived Materials
What is your research focus?
The research in our lab aims to develop bacteriophages as drug-delivery agents where functional monomers can be oligomerized on phage surfaces for further functional characterization. It aligns perfectly well with the goal of BioPacific MIP and has facilitated a few collaborations with other labs developing these functional monomers. Bacteriophages themselves are great biomaterials with distinguished properties such as high stability under various physical and chemical conditions, great biocompatibility, and can be easily chemically modified. They are composed of a repetition of capsid proteins and can be used specifically to target different antigens by expressing peptides, proteins or antibody fragments on its surface. As a continuation of our study in collaboration with BioPACIFIC MIP, we have successfully created 2 libraries of chimeric M13 phages that shown binding to a wide range of gram-negative bacteria. Our lab member has developed protocols for high throughput targeting screening using the living biofoundry to characterize the binding of selected phage to target pathogens. By conjugating drugs that are less effective in their monomeric form, we were able to deliver these molecules with a high local concentration to target cells and improve the therapeutic efficacy by orders of magnitude. In our next step, we aim to explore different monomeric compounds, potentially also in a high throughput manner for screening purposes to achieve functional such as breaking down biofilm, anti-fungal and beyond. We also aim to use the micro rheometer or the multi-indenter to characterize the change in biofilm viscosity in a high throughput fashion.
What excites you about NSF BioPACIFIC MIP?
As a fourth-year graduate student, the fellowship has introduced me to researchers whose experience could inspire my own work or form potentially collaborations. I am also currently looking for the next step of my career and this has introduced me to great opportunities and suggestions that can lead to future jobs. From the all-hands meetings between UCLA and UCSB, we get to understand others’ work better and I often get inspired or get to know the existence of new tools that could help in my own research. Another aspect I really appreciate is the instrumental resources at UCLA and UCSB CNSI that become available to us through BioPACIFIC MIP. We are particularly interested in the peptide synthesizer to explore antimicrobial peptides and their sequence defined functions. We are also interested in the instruments that are able to help us characterize physical property of biofilms in a high throughput manner. The networking opportunities as well as educational programs such as the summer school would be greatly beneficial. I’m really interested in the individual development plan and looking forward to continue working with people at BioPACIFIC MIP.
