iHealthtech Seminar – Prof Daniel A. Heller
Nanoengineering for the Detection and Treatment of Cancer
We develop methods to accelerate the research, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer and allied diseases via delivery and sensor nanotechnologies.
We investigate methods to enable therapeutics to translocate tissue barriers via targeted drug delivery strategies. We developed machine learning processes to facilitate the encapsulation of many drug classes into nanoparticles, based on drug molecular structure, facilitating the rapid synthesis of diverse nanotherapeutics. We also investigate glycoproteins expressed in the disease microenvironment as a nanotherapeutic target improve the efficacy of precision therapies and to abrogate dose-limiting toxicities, and to facilitate delivery across the blood-brain barrier for the treatment of intracranial tumors and metastases.
We also develop optical nanosensor technologies using carbon nanotubes to facilitate the screening, diagnosis, and monitoring of diseases, and to build new assays for cancer drug development. We developed sensors to investigate metabolic changes in live cells and tissues, as well as a liquid biopsy platform for the detection of diseases in the absence of known biomarkers, facilitated by machine learning algorithms.
Speaker Biography
Dr Daniel A. Heller, PhD, is Head of the Cancer Nanomedicine Laboratory and Member of the Molecular Pharmacology Program in the Sloan Kettering Institute, and Co-Director of The Pat and Ian Cook Doctoral Program in Cancer Engineering at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He is also Professor in the Department of Pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr Heller obtained his PhD in chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010 and completed a Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in the laboratory of Robert Langer at MIT in 2012. Dr Heller’s research group develops nanotechnologies for the research, diagnosis, and treatment of cancers and allied diseases. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed publications, is an inventor on over 20 pending or issued patents, and he established several active startup companies to advance these technologies to industry practice or clinical trials. He is a 2012 recipient of the National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award, a 2015 Kavli Fellow, a 2021 American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) Fellow, a 2023 awardee of the UM Ventures Life Science Invention of the Year, among other honors
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