His six patents place Dr. Frank Alexis, assistant professor at Clemson’s Department of Bioengineering, third on the journal’s list of the five Top Translational Junior Faculty in 2013. The novel drug-delivery strategies he develops decrease toxicity by delivering drugs directly to the part of the body where they are needed. The faculty were ranked by total patents at their current affiliation.
An image created by Dr. Alexis’s group is the frontispiece of Advanced Functional Materials Volume 24 Issue 37. The illustration accompanies an article on research by Dr. Alexis and Dr. Jeffrey Anker, assistant professor in Clemson’s Department of Chemistry, about use of polymer-coated, X-ray excited luminescent nanoparticles to quantitatively measure intracellular drug release.
Polymer-coated radioluminescent nanoparticles are loaded with the photoactive drug protoporphyrin. The overlap between the nanoparticle emission and the protoporphyrin enables measurement of drug-loading and release kinetics in cells.
According to Dr. Alexis, “The critical aspect of the polymer-coated radioluminescent nanoparticles is quantitative measurement of drug release into cells, and possibly tissues, using noninvasive imaging methods. To engineer better drug-delivery systems requires greater knowledge of release kinetics for complex biological systems like cells and tissues.
Using noninvasive methods to measure drug dose could be vital to establish the therapeutic dose for personalized treatments.”
