I have a background in clinical pharmacology with specific training and expertise in cancer drug delivery and pharmacology. My laboratory is investigating the impact of engineered drug carriers on antitumor immunity and tumor progression. The long term goal is to understand the interactions between nanomaterials and the immune system in order to develop nanomedicines that will exploit desired immune effects while mitigating undesired immune responses. Since the immune system plays a role in pathogenesis of many diseases, this has broad applications beyond cancer therapy.
My prior work as a fellow at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill, utilized preclinical and clinical studies to investigate phenotypic probes of the mononuclear phagocyte system as biomarkers for personalizing therapy with anticancer liposomes. I also evaluated the pharmacokinetics of novel anticancer nanoparticles such as Stealth liposomal CKD-602 (a camptothecin analogue), Optisomal topotecan, and folate-targeted polyethylene glycol- and gadolinium-PRINT (particle replication in non-wetting template)-nanoparticles.
Interests
- Breast health/cancer
- Cancer
- Cervical cancer
- Drugs
- Oncology
- Ovarian cancer
- Pharmacology
- Pharmacy
- Physician assistant
- Research
Pharmacy Research Interests
- cancer chemotherapy
- cancer immunotherapy
- chemotherapy
- clinical pharmacology
- clinical trial
- drug delivery
- drug delivery systems
- drug development
- experimental therapeutics
- hematology/oncology
- immunotherapy
- liposomes
- nanocarrier
- nanoparticles
- novel immunotherapy
- pharmacology
- tumor immunology