Start
Jan 10, 2013 - 17:00
End
Jan 10, 2013 - 18:00
Venue
Room 118 (Creativity Hall) Ground Floor Chemical Engineering Department
Event Type
Speaker
Dr. Suvajyoti Guha Food and Drug Administration Silver Spring Maryland U. S. A.
Title
Understanding Bio-nanoparticle Behavior through Physical Characterization
Bio-nanoparticle (e.g. nanoparticles viruses proteins nanoparticle-protein conjugates) research aided by the expanding multibillion dollar bio-pharma industry has seen an exponential growth in the last decade. This talk will be an attempt to integrate the fundamentals of mechanical chemical and bio-engineering to understand bio-nanoparticle behavior in liquid and aerosol phases. The first part of this talk will focus on research efforts undertaken at National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg using a state-of-the-art gas-phase ion mobility technique known as Electrospray-Differential Mobility Analysis (ES-DMA). An ES-DMA first aerosolizes nanoparticles (typically in the size range of 2.7 nm to 400 nm) from liquid phase and then characterizes them based on the balance of drag and electrical forces. Results from ES-DMA will be demonstrated to explain the complex phenomenon of protein adsorption and desorption from surfaces. ES-DMA is further utilized to characterize protein aggregates. Some examples will be presented to demonstrate that ES-DMA can complement or at times outperform other industrial gold-standard liquid-phase techniques (e.g. size exclusion chromatography and analytical ultracentrifugation). This talk will also demonstrate ES-DMA’s capabilities upon integration with aerosol particle mass analyzers (which classifies particles based on the balance of electrical and centrifugal forces) to quantify ligand adsorption to nanoparticles. The second part of the talk will focus on Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) efforts to understand the harmful effects of bionanoparticles in aerosolized form to human beings and how protective devices such as respirators or masks can reduce such exposure. We are currently developing computational models validated by experimental results for understanding aerosol transport through protective devices such as masks/respirators which concomitantly would aid in our understanding of risks posed by exposure to bionanoparticles. Some of our initial results will be shared.