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Wed 03/30
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What is Design + Tech? | Ulrich (Uli) Wiesner

Cornell dots: From Design to Technology of Theranostic Probes in Oncology

After decades of intense research, cancer is still a devastating diagnosis with substantial socio-economic effects on individuals, families, and society at large. Decades ago the emergence of the field of nanotechnology followed by applications to nanomedicine promised revolutionary ways to treat diseases like cancer. Indeed, recent developments of completely novel approaches to highly effective vaccines against COVID-19 have shown the potential of such nanoscience driven technologies. This talk will examine the role of the emerging field of molecular design and engineering applied to nanoscopic fluorescent materials referred to as Cornell dots or simply C dots, for diagnostic and therapeutic (i.e. theranostic) applications in oncology. Including discussions of results of past and ongoing human clinical trials, it will be demonstrated that their ultrasmall size in combination with their multifunctional design promises unusual efficacy and safety in the treatment of cancer. This includes crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) enabling the targeting and treatment of primary and metastatic lesions in the brain. The presentation will end with a short outlook into the future of C dot based design and technology development.

Speaker Bio

Ulrich (Uli) Wisener studied Chemistry at the University of Mainz, Germany, and UC Irvine, CA. He gained his Ph.D. in 1991 in Physical Chemistry with work at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P), Mainz, on holographic information storage in polymer liquid crystals. After a two-year postdoc at E.S.P.C.I. in Paris, France, on local dynamics-mechanical property correlations in polyesters, he returned to the MPI-P in 1993 where he finished his Habilitation in 1998 with work on block copolymers under oscillatory shear and block copolymer ionomers. He joined the Cornell University, NY, Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) faculty in 1999 as a tenured Associate Professor, became a Full Professor in 2005, and since 2008 is the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering. At Cornell, he holds secondary appointments (field membership) in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (CBE), Biomedical Engineering (BME), and Chemistry and Chemical Biology (CCB). Since his arrival at Cornell he has worked at the interface between polymer science and inorganic/solid-state chemistry with the goal to generate multifunctional nanomaterials for applications including energy conversion and storage, clean water, and nanomedicine. Between 2015 and 2016 he was the co-director of the MSKCC-Cornell Center for Translation of Cancer Nanomedicine (MC2TCN), one of six Centers for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE) funded by the NCI (https://www.cancer.gov/sites/ocnr/research/alliance/ccne).