American Scientist

When Zhen Gu first applied to work in the United States, the immigration officer asked him what about his line of work, and he said “drug delivery.” Dr. Gu jokes that the officer looked at him like he was some kind of illegal narcotics dealer from the television series Breaking Bad, but he points out that his research really is about breaking up bad things, by releasing mediations at precise locations and dosages in the body.

Dr. Gu, an associate professor of biomedical engineering atthe University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University, now uses materials that are responsive to biological cues in order to house and deliver medications. He uses the analogy of a puzzle cube todescribe the different combination of properties that these bio-responsive materials need: They need to have the correct melding of material properties to hold the drug, as well as the appropriate function for the desired task, and a trigger that can release the medication at a precise moment—and each one of these properties could come from a long list of options. For instance, triggers can be chemical, electrical, magnetic, or physiological. Dr. Gu’s work centers on finding the combinations that work best.

The areas around tumors tend to be acidic, for instance, so Dr. Gu works on using this signal as a trigger for medications embedded in bio-responsive materials. His research also looks at ways to control diabetes by developing materials that can selectively release insulin when triggered by blood sugar levels. Dr. Gu discusses these mechanisms and more in this video of his talk during American Scientist’s Pizza Lunch series on January 31, 2017.