Why I Love … Creating New Proteins


Proteins are polymers commonly made from a set of 22 natural building blocks called amino acids. In the lab, my team can now engineer entirely new proteins by adding or changing those building blocks. We have developed proteins that can assemble themselves into nanoparticles capable of encapsulating drug molecules. That has the exciting potential to transform cancer therapies, and even more exciting is that, thanks to the National Science Foundation, we’re working on tailoring these nanoparticles with specific fluorine tags to allow us to visualize them.

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