Bowen Li

High Throughput Development of Nanoparticles for RNA Medicine Delivery: Traditional development of new ionizable lipids and lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) often involves multi-step chemical syntheses and fabrication
steps that require significant engineering and time before determining whether they have biological utility. However, the rational design of new lipids and formulations can be challenging, given the complexity of biological systems. A “high throughput” approach can be valuable because many variables can simultaneously be tested. Our research involves a high-throughput platform where thousands of chemically diverse libraries of lipid-like materials can be rapidly synthesized using combinatorial chemistry and formulated into LNPs, which can then be screened for tissue- or cell-specific nucleic acid delivery. This platform technology increases the diversity of synthetic material structures and facilitates the identification of structure-function relationships.