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PLENARY SPEAKERS
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Prof. Samir Mitragotri
Harvard University, USA

Samir Mitragotri is an Indian American professor at Harvard University, an inventor, an entrepreneur, and a researcher in the fields of drug delivery and biomaterials. He is currently the Hiller Professor of Bioengineering and Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Prior to 2017, he was the Duncan and Suzanne Mellichamp Chair Professor at University of California, Santa Barbara. Mitragotri has invented many novel drug delivery technologies, especially in the fields of transdermal, oral and targeted systems. He invented techniques to deliver drugs transdermally using low-frequency ultrasound, pulsed microjet injector, high throughput skin experimentation, skin penetrating peptides and ionic liquids. He also invented intestinal patches and ionic liquids for oral delivery of proteins. Mitragotri also pioneered nanoparticle-enabled cell therapies which use drug-loaded nanoparticles that hitch a ride on red blood cells, monocytes and other circulatory cells for tissue-specific delivery. Mitragotri’s technologies are used to develop next generation therapies against diabetes, cancer, psoriasis, hemorrhage, trauma and infections. Mitragotri has published over 400 research publications, has given over 500 presentations worldwide, and is an inventor on over 200 patents/applications. His publications are cited with an h-index of 122. Mitragotri is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the National Academy of Inventors. He is also a member of the US National Academy of Engineering since 2015 for the development, clinical translation, and commercialization of transdermal drug delivery systems. He is a co-founder of several companies that are developing products based on his inventions. He received his PhD in chemical engineering at MIT and BS in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology. Mitragotri serves on the editorial boards of several journals and has served as the founding editor-in-chief of Bioengineering and Translational Medicine.
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Prof. Kam W. Leong
Columbia University, USA

Leong’s research focuses on the development of innovative biomaterials for two major therapeutic applications:  drug delivery and regenerative medicine. He uses polymeric biomaterials to deliver chemotherapeutics, DNA-based therapeutics, and cells for cancer therapy, gene therapy, immunotherapy, and cell therapy. He also uses tissue engineering principles and stem cell engineering to construct human tissue-on-a-chip for disease modeling and high-throughput drug screening. In cancer therapy, Leong collaborates with Dr. Tadao Ohno to develop a tumor vaccine comprising cytokines and tumor tissue fragments from the patients. It has been used to treat over 350 brain cancer patients in Japan. In nonviral gene therapy, Leong demonstrates the feasibility of using DNA nanoparticles to deliver FVIII and FIX genes orally to treat hemophilia in animal models. He has also developed nanomanufacturing techniques to produce DNA nanoparticles, a critical barrier in the eventual translation of nanomedicine. In regenerative medicine, Leong pioneers the application of DNA nanoparticles to convert adult cells from one cell type to another, raising the possibility of treating intractable neurodegenerative disorders via nonviral cell reprogramming. He has also recently developed nanoparticle-mediated genome editing technologies to delete harmful genes and correct genetic disorders. The work will impact precision medicine and the development of human tissue-on-a-chip for new drug development. Leong received a BS in chemical engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania.  He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Editor-in-Chief of Biomaterials.

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KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
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Prof. Yadong Wang
Cornell University, USA

Yadong Wang obtained his Ph.D. degree at Stanford University in 1999, performed his postdoctoral studies at MIT, and joined the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2003 as an assistant professor. He was recruited to Pittsburgh in 2008. He has published high-impact articles at every stage of his academic career in journals including Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Medicine, and PNAS. Several of his inventions are licensed, one polymer he invented is now commercially available and approved for clinical use. He co-founded two companies to translate the technologies developed in his laboratory. His research focuses on creating biomaterials that will solve key challenges in the cardiovascular, nervous and musculoskeletal systems. His team enjoys collaboration with others who share the same passion for translational research.
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Prof. Thanh Duc Nguyen
University of Connecticut, USA

Dr. Nguyen is an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering, joined with the Biomedical Engineering department at the University of Connecticut (UConn). His research is highly interdisciplinary and at the interface of biomedicine, materials and nano/micro technology. Specifically, his research focuses on the science and technology to transform biodegradable and biocompatible materials (e.g surgical-suture polymers and amino acids) into special forms, shapes, or structures with “smart” functions at nano/micro-scales for diverse applications in vaccine/drug delivery, regenerative engineering and electrical implants. He developed a platform technology, so-called SEAL (StampEd Assembly of polymer Layer) to create 3-dimensional microstructures of biodegradable polymers and advanced the SEAL method to create a novel single-administration self-boosting skin microneedle patch. This single-administration microneedle platform can be programmed to repeatedly deliver not only vaccines but also other therapeutics like antibodies and diabetic/pain drugs, thus avoiding all painful and inconvenient injections in the traditional vaccination and drug administration methods. Besides the microneedle technology, his research group at UConn has extensively studied biodegradable piezoelectric materials, derived from safe medical polymers and natural amino acids, to develop novel biodegradable implanted force-sensor and ultrasound transducer for monitoring vital intra-organ pressures and delivering medicines through the blood-brain barrier, respectively. The biodegradable piezoelectric materials were also used as a tissue scaffold which can be remotely activated to produce electrical cues for stimulating tissue regeneration. Dr. Nguyen’s works have been published in prestigious journals including Science, Science Translational medicine, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communication, Advanced Materials, PNAS etc. and highlighted in major media such as The New York Times, BBC News, the Guardian, NIH research matter etc. He received several awards including the Young Investigator Award from the journal of Biomaterials (2022), ACell Young Investigator Award (2020), MIT top innovator under 35 for Asia Pacific (2019), NIH Trailblazer Award for Young and Early Investigators (2018), SPIE Rising Researcher Award (2019), Young Investigator Award in Biosciences and Bioengineering of Applied Sciences (2019), and the SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award (2018) etc.
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INVITED SPEAKERS
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Prof. Liu Yang
Peking University School of Stomatology, China

Dr. Yang Liu is currently an assistant professor at Peking University School and Hospital of Stomatology. He received his bachelor’s degree from Harbin Engineering University (2013) and PhD from Peking University (2019). He did his postdoc with Prof. Thanh D. Nguyen at University of Connecticut. His research is focused on biodegradable materials used for regenerative engineering. He has published 28 papers in Science Translational Medicine, Science Advances, Advanced Functional Materials, etc. He was awarded Trainee Award by Chinese Association for Biomaterials (CAB, 2022) and selected as the finalist of MIT TR35 Asian Pacific (2022). His work has been widely recognized by top researchers in Cell, Nature Reviews Materials, Nature Reviews Rheumatology, and reported by more than 30 authorities and media.
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Prof. Kevin Lo
University of Connecticut, USA

Assistant Professor, Dr. Wai Hong (Kevin) Lo. With a Ph. D. in Biochemistry from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Dr. Lo works within the UConn Health with appointments in the UConn Stem Cell Institute, Institute for Regenerative Engineering, the Department of Medicine, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Institute of Materials Science, and the Connecticut Institute for Clinical and Translational Science (CICATS). Dr. Lo has engaged in several varying research projects. He studied musculoskeletal regenerative engineering, to tackle the current medical challenge of treating skeletal diseases and injury. He has also worked to target nanoscale drug delivery for bone diseases, and researched the intracellular drug and gene delivery systems utilizing cytoplasmic dynein molecular motor protein.
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Prof. Minh T.N. LE
National University of Singapore, Singapore

Dr. Le graduated from the National University of Singapore in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences. She further received a Ph.D. degree in Computational and Systems Biology from the Singapore-Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Alliance under the guidance of Prof. Bing Lim at the Genome Institute of Singapore and Prof. Harvey Lodish at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. From 2010 to 2015, she took a postdoctoral training under Prof. Judy Lieberman at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in the USA. From 2015 to 2019, she worked as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biomedical Sciences at City University of Hong Kong (CityU). She became a tenure-tracked Assistant Professor at Department of Pharmacology, National University of Singapore, in 2019. Dr. Le is well recognized for her contributions to the field of microRNAs (miRNAs), extracellular vesicles (EVs) and cancer biology. She was the first to identify a miRNA that regulates p53, an important tumor suppressor gene. This miRNA, miR-125b, was subsequently found to be a potent oncogenic miRNA in leukemia and many solid tumors. Dr. Le characterized the anti-apoptotic functions of miR-125b in zebrafish embryos and mammalian cells. She demonstrated that this tiny RNA is dispensable for normal development as it regulates the delicate balance between cell death and growth by repressing the p53 gene network. Furthermore, during her postdoctoral training, Dr. Le illustrated a novel mechanism of cancer crosstalk in which miRNAs secreted by metastatic breast cancer cells are delivered to non-metastatic cells via extracellular vesicles (EVs) and promote colonization of tumor cells in the lung. Recently, our group has established a new EV-based drug delivery platform with efficient and safe delivery of RNA drugs to cancer cells. With these original findings, Dr. Le’s articles have been cited over 3,000 times by researchers worldwide.