Engineering Genes and Genomes was the focus of the Institute for NanoBioTechnology’s 15^th Nano-Bio Symposium on Friday, June 10, 2022. This year’s event went hybrid, which held virtual lectures and an in-person poster session and reception. The symposium is the INBT’s signature event that showcases and celebrates the latest discoveries from our multidisciplinary researcher teams and partners.

The event featured 10 speakers from across Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and School of Engineering, Spark Therapeutics, Harvard University, and MIT to discuss topics about genome structure and how to manipulate gene products. These included nanoscale system developments to deliver gene therapies in tissue and cell specific ways, RNA regulatory dynamics that govern how genotype manifests as phenotype, and genomic tagging to reveal lineage relationships in development and disease. The goal is to bring these advances to patients through safe, efficient, and equitable means.

“Today’s symposium focuses on engineering genes and genomics; an area where we are contributing to astonishing progress, and one that has important implications for biological understanding and the potential to deliver wholly new approaches to diagnostics and therapeutics,” said T.E. Schlesinger, the Benjamin T. Rome Dean at the Whiting School of Engineering.

The in-person poster session and reception returned after a two-year hiatus due to COVID. It featured over 30 posters, had over 100 attendees, and five poster winners. The two undergraduate poster awards are sponsored by Tom and Lois Fekete and the three graduate awards are sponsored by the INBT. Tom Fekete is the former INBT Director of Corporate Partnerships and retired in 2018 after ten years at the INBT. He was also in attendance to present the undergraduate awards and serve as a poster judge for the graduate students.

Virtual registrants came from all around the United States from California to Connecticut, but also outside the United States, including Colombia, England, Mexico, Uzbekistan, Australia, Brazil, Pakistan, Turkey, India, China, and Scotland to watch the virtual lectures. By extending it’s reach to places outside the Baltimore-area, INBT furthers its goal of bringing together people in academia, industry, and more to share knowledge, ideas, and foster new collaborations.

Undergraduate Students
1st Place: Yeongseo Lim, Developing Deep Learning Model to Detect Breast Cancer Cell Nuclei in Brightfield Images
2nd Place: Humza Qureshi, Differential Effects of Extracellular Fluid Viscosity on Epithelial Cell and Fibroblast Migration and Proliferation

Graduate Students
1st Place: Joseph Choy, Biomaterial Niches for T Cell Metabolic Immunoengineering
2nd Place: Han Wang, Supramolecular Nanotubes by Anticancer Drug Assembly
3rd Place: Monika Kizerwetter, Anti-CD123 Chimeric Antigen Receptor Natural Killer Cell Therapy to Treat Acute Myeloid Leukemia

Keynote Speakers

George Church, PhD
Professor of Genetics, Harvard Medical School
Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, Harvard Medical School and MIT
Genome Engineering and the Future of Medicine

Steven Altschuler, MD
Managing Director of Healthcare Ventures at Ziff Capital
Co-founder Spark Therapeutics
Former CEO of Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania
Spark Therapeutics: A New Model for Bringing Gene Therapy to Patients and Partnering with Investors and Industry

Panel Speakers: Challenges in Engineering Genes and Genomes

Daniel Siegwart, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry and the Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center

Anthony Philippakis, MD, PhD
Chief Data Officer and Co-Director of the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center, Broad Institute
Venture Partner, Google Ventures

Jeff Coller, PhD
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of RNA Biology and Therapeutics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Steven Altschuler, MD
Managing Director of Healthcare Ventures at Ziff Capital

Moderators: Sashank Reddy and Christy Wyskiel, Senior Advisor to the President of Johns Hopkins University and Executive Director of Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures

Johns Hopkins Faculty Research Spotlight

Efie Kokkoli, PhD
Engineering Targeted Nanoparticles for RNA Delivery
Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Johns Hopkins University

Reza Kalhor, PhD
Understanding Cell Fate Through Genomic Barcodes
Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Jeff Coller, PhD
Harnessing RNA Metabolism for Precision RNA Therapeutics
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of RNA Biology and Therapeutics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

Jordan Green, PhD
Polymeric Nanoparticles for Cell-Specific Gene Delivery Without Targeting Ligands
Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University

Taekjip (TJ) Ha, PhD
Very Fast CRISPR on Demand
Bloomberg Distinguished Professor
Departments of Biophysics and Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University