Date/Time
Date(s) - 20/10/2025
3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Location
Communicore, C1-007
We have now entered a “post-antibiotic era” in which antimicrobial resistance is leading to fatal outcomes for common, once treatable infections. Bacteria and fungi routinely adapt antimicrobial resistance mechanisms, the rates and complexity of which can be exacerbated by frequent use of broad-spectrum antimicrobials and prolonged exposure. The formation of microbial biofilms further complicates infection treatment. These complex three-dimensional microbial communities exhibit numerous mechanisms of antibiotic and immune evasion. Smart microbe-responsive and targeted drug delivery systems have the potential to effectively treat and prevent infections, while limiting resistance development and host toxicity. In this talk, I will describe our recent work developing responsive and targeted biomaterials for the treatment of bacterial and fungal infections. These materials range from nanoparticles to hydrogels for the treatment of systemic and localized infections. I will describe multi-stimuli-responsive biopolymer nanoparticles that have shown promising biofilm penetration and disruption ability. I will also discuss the development of fungi-targeting liposomal nanoparticles with promising antibiofilm properties. Finally, I will describe our work on bacteria-responsive hydrogels which degrade and release therapeutic cargo specifically in the presence of bacterial beta-lactamases, a family of enzymes commonly involved in antimicrobial resistance. These smart hydrogels exhibit bacteria-triggered drug release properties and enable complete eradication of infection in a murine skin abrasion Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection model, while limiting antibiotic resistance development.
Bio:
Anita Shukla is the Elaine I. Savage Professor of Engineering at Brown University. Her research involves the development of biomaterials for the treatment of bacterial and fungal infections. Professor Shukla is the recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) and an NSF CAREER award. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and a National Academy of Medicine Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Scholar and serves as an associate editor for ACS Applied Polymer Materials. Prior to joining Brown in 2013, she was an NIH postdoctoral fellow in Bioengineering at Rice University. She received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her B.S. in chemical engineering and biomedical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.