ChE Professor and Chair Thomas Webster Interviewed in Tech.Mic for Cutting-Edge Research in Nanoparticles
In the Tech.Mic article “These Tiny Robots Swimming in Your Blood Are Going to Save Your Life”, Thomas Webster, Professor and Department Chair, Chemical Engineering and Art Zafiropoulo Chair in Engineering is interviewed for his research in nanomedicine drug delivery and nanoparticle sensor detection.
In the Webster Lab, researchers are using nanomedicine to fight viruses including Ebola, E. coli, and Zika. "Nanomaterials help the delivery of a drug. If a pharmaceutical company has developed a drug to treat cancer, what we have done in the nanomaterial community is develop carriers for that drug so it can target a specific cell and release that drug to the cell," Prof. Webster remarks.
In addition to drug delivery, Prof. Webster is leading the future field of preventing and predicting diseases through nanoparticle sensors. "Think about medicine where it is," Webster says. "You don't go to a doctor unless it's an annual visit or something's wrong. By then it's usually too late, especially in the case of cancer, and you have to have significant intervention to reverse [problems] and sometimes that's not possible. I think that's why our health care costs increase, because medicine is still reactive."
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