GENERAL SEMINAR: Prof. Mihaela C. Stefan, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Dallas
ABOUT Prof. Stefan
Mihaela C. Stefan received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Politehnica University Bucharest, Romania. She worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher in Matyjaszewski’s group at Carnegie Mellon University from 2002 to 2003. She also worked as a research scientist in Richard D. McCullough’s group at Carnegie Mellon University, synthesizing block copolymers containing semiconducting polythiophenes.
She joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Dallas in 2007 and is currently a Eugene McDermott Professor and Department Head. She received the NSF Career Award in 2010, the NS&M Outstanding Teacher Award in 2009 and 2017, the Inclusive Teaching Diversity Award in 2012, the President’s Teaching Excellence Award in 2014, Provost’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Undergraduate Research Mentoring in 2015, and Provost’s Award for Faculty Excellence in Graduate Research Mentoring in 2021. She also received the Wilfred T. Doherty Award from the Dallas Forth Worth Local Section of the American Chemical Society in 2021. Her research group is developing novel organic semiconductors for organic electronics, biodegradable and biocompatible polymers for drug delivery applications, and rare novel catalysts for polymerization of dienes and cyclic esters. At the University of Texas at Dallas, she supervised 48 graduate students, and 29 Ph.D. students graduated with a Ph.D. in Chemistry under her supervision. She also mentored ~150 undergraduate students who worked on her research lab on various projects.
Webpage:
https://profiles.utdallas.edu/mihaela
https://personal.utdallas.edu/~mci071000
ABOUT RESEARCH
Amphiphilic Polycaprolactone Diblock Copolymers for Drug Delivery of Anticancer Drugs
Mihaela C. Stefan
Eugene McDermott Professor Mihaela C. Stefan
University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Amphiphilic polycaprolactone (PCL) diblock copolymers are synthesized by the ring-opening polymerization of various g-substituted ε-caprolactone monomers and self-assembled into the water to form micelles, which can improve the loading of anticancer drugs. The drug-loaded micelles can passively target tumors through an enhanced permeability and retention (EPR) effect. Our research has focused on:
(i) Strategies to increase the drug loading capacity of the amphiphilic diblock copolymer micelles by tuning substituents at the hydrophobic block and/or co-loading with polyphenols, such as resveratrol and quercetin. Non-covalent interactions, such as pi-stacking and hydrogen bonding between the anticancer drug, doxorubicin, and polyphenol, have increased drug loading capacity;
(ii) High glutathione production is one of the defense mechanisms cancer cells develop to survive elevated oxidative stress and resist certain anticancer drugs. Specifically, depleting glutathione with doxorubicin-loaded micelle prepared from a novel 2,3-diiodomaleimide-functionalized PCL exhibited significant cancer cell death;
(iii) Enediyne-maleimide substituent generates diradical upon their activation cleaves DNA in cancer cells leading to cytotoxicity as inspired by calicheamicin;
(iv) a microfluidic device to cultivate stem cell-derived organoids to simulate the dynamic microenvironment of the organ and test the toxicity of drug-loaded micelles. The cell-cell and cell-matrix interactions found in living organs can improve the evaluation of ex vivo toxicity of drug-loaded micelles.