Research interests Lipid-based drug delivery systems that can be constructed to respond to acidic environments are of great interest to medical sciences, as they can be potentially targeted to release their contents to hyperactive tumor tissues of low pH or to respond by fusion and disruption of primary endosomes, thereby releasing their contents into the cytoplasm. The "Laboratory of Basic and Applied Lipid Research" is primarily focused on the delineation of the structural requirements of double-chained surfactants for pH controllable cohesive artificial bilayer with adjusted fluid characteristics at will. Our work involves design, synthesis and physicochemical characterization of double-chained surfactants. Physical studies comprise a variety of instruments, such as NMR, DSC, FTIR, PCS, Fluorescence spectroscopy, X-ray and Electron microscopy techniques. Polar head-group conformational studies are performed using molecular and quantum mechanical methods in collaboration with Dr. Matsunaga of Dept. of Chemistry & Biochemistry. These sort of basic studies are instrumental in the design of improved efficiency membrane-based drug delivery systems. |
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