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Creating autoimmune disease therapies at the smallest scales

Building on an interest in small-scale biology, PhD candidate Ivan Vuong is working to develop safer, more effective therapies for autoimmune diseases at the UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering

From a young age, Ivan Vuong was fascinated with biology at the smallest levels. As a child, he checked out books from the library about protozoans and watched the TV show “Monsters Inside Me,” about parasitic infections.

“There was something inherently fascinating about the how complicated and functional small living things composed of only a few cells could be,” he said.

When a close family member developed an autoimmune disease, Vuong shifted that fascination to medicine. Could his love of small things be used to create new treatments for disease?

As it turns out, yes. As a University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) PhD student in the lab of Prof. Jeffrey Hubbell, Vuong is engineering protein therapeutics to target immune cells in the gut. The idea is to develop safer, more effective therapies for autoimmune diseases, like inflammatory bowel disease. Many people with this spectrum of chronic inflammatory gut disease must take immunosuppressive drugs that help relieve symptoms but also give them body-wide adverse effects.

A tiny, engineered protein could modulate only gut-centric immune cells. “If we could have a protein therapy that accumulates in the gut, it can target the disease there and be more effective with fewer side effects,” he said.

Vuong got a taste of the world of tiny medicine as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University, where he majored in biomedical engineering and conducted research on another drug delivery system—lipid nanoparticles—to help increase the effectiveness of cancer immunotherapy.

There, he learned the importance of having a good mentor to develop research skills and access opportunities. Now, he tries to apply that lesson to his own work, mentoring local high school students and helping teach local middle school students the basics of science. He is also part of PME’s Science Communications program, and recently performed science demonstrations at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry.

He also promotes a culture of lab safety by serving on committees of the Joint Research Safety Initiative, a community run by students, post-doctoral fellows, and research assistants that provides safety and educational resources for students and faculty. It is communities like these that make graduate school at PME so great, he said.

“I’m from the Bay Area, and I could have gone to graduate school closer to home, but I found PME to be very interdisciplinary and collaborative,” he said. “Everyone here is helpful and friendly, from different backgrounds and different experiences. I really like being a part of these various initiatives and participating in discussions with other students who are passionate like me. It’s very motivating.”

After getting his PhD, Vuong hopes to work in the biotech industry to continue to develop therapies for autoimmune diseases. “I’ve seen from my own family experience how important it is to develop new therapies, to give people a better quality of life,” he said. “I want to be a small piece of that effort.”