Delivery of Antimicrobial Peptides in Antifungal Extracellular Vesicles

Presenter: Seth Boledovic, Bioengineering , Global Public Health Scholars

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For my practicum, I worked in Dr. Steven Jay’s Lab - located in A. James Clark Hall, 3rd floor. During my time in the lab, I worked towards developing methods for scalable production of anti-fungal EVs carrying antimicrobial peptide cargo. Throughout my time I became comfortable with TFF, NTA, and other laboratory techniques such as cell culture. I was able to perform different types of growth curves and assays to help with research models. Over the last 9 months, I learned the importance of new therapeutic research and the challenges that come alongside it - as well as all the ways our bodies interact with different types of fungal and bacterial infections. Being in a laboratory setting opened my eyes to the amount of time that goes into the development of every new therapeutic, and that progress in the healthcare field is far from linear. Candida albicans and Candida auris(the fungi I work with) cause around 200,000 deaths per annum due to diseases in susceptible populations. Current antifungal therapeutic methods can be relatively effective, however, they take a long time to eradicate infection. By working towards the goal of developing new therapeutics I hope to not only save thousands of lives in the future but also therapeutics decrease the cost and labor to produce EV antimicrobial peptide therapeutics through the development of scalable production methods.