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There are known differences in drug metabolism, outcomes, and side effects across racial and ethnic groups, and not everyone responds to medications in the same way. A medicine that works well for others may not work well for you, resulting in significant side effects. In the US, adverse drug reactions cause a great number of hospitalizations and are a leading cause of death in hospitalized patients. Pharmacogenomics, or individualized drug therapy, can help us prevent dangerous drug reactions by pre-identifying at-risk patients. Pharmacogenomics analyses can study your unique genetic profile to determine which medications are likely to help you or harm you, before you even take them. Through this avenue of precision health, we can tailor medical care to every individual, and provide every patient with the right medication at the right dosage at the right time.

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In this talk, in addition to design principles, I will discuss the application of zwitterionic material to implants, stem cell cultures for controlled preservation/expansion/differentiation, medical devices and drug delivery carriers. With zwitterionic coatings, hydrogels or nanoparticles, results show no capsule formation upon subcutaneous implantation in mice for one year, expansion of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) without differentiation, no anti-coagulants needed for artificial lungs in sheep, and no antibodies generated against zwitterionic polymers. Currently, we are performing a fundamental study of material interactions with the immune system, developing immunomodulatory materials and safe/organ-targeting delivery carriers and translating our biomaterials to applications ranging from immunotherapy and vaccine to regenerative medicine.

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