The Pun Lab is part of the Department of Bioengineering and the Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute at the University of Washington.
Macromolecule drugs such as nucleic acids, peptides and proteins hold great promise for disease treatment. For example, gene therapy can be used to correct genetic disorders such as hemophilia, pro-apoptotic peptides that trigger cell suicide can be used for cancer therapy, and intracellular antibodies can potentially reach 'undruggable targets'. However, efficient intracellular delivery of this class of drugs remains a major challenge to clinical translation.
We are developing bioinspired materials to advance drug delivery, cell therapy and molecular imaging technologies. We integrate techniques and principles from engineering, chemistry, and cell biology to achieve this goal. This video describes some of our work: