Students affiliated with the Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence (CCNE) and the Physical Sciences-Oncology Center (PS-OC) at Johns Hopkins University have organized a spring mini-symposium for March 21, 10 a.m. in the Hackerman Hall Auditorium at the Johns Hopkins University Homewood campus.

The student-run mini-symposiums aim to bring together researchers from across the campus affiliated with the PS-OC and CCNE. Graduate students training in these centers, both administered by Johns Hopkins Institute for NanoBioTechnology, work in various disciplines from physics to engineering to the basic biological sciences but with an emphasis on understanding cancer metastasis and developing methods for cancer diagnosis or therapy.

The invited speaker for the symposium is postdoctoral researcher Megan Ho of Duke University. Ho earned her PhD in mechanical engineering in the Wang lab in 2008. She is currently focused on developing microfluidic devices to investigate and control the fundamental reactions that form nanocomplexes for gene delivery. (10 a.m.)

Student apeakers, who will talk for 15 minutes, include:

• Jane Chisholm (Justin Hanes lab/Ophthalmology): Cisplatin nanocomplexes for the local treatment of small cell lung cancer (10:20 a.m.)
• Yunke Song (Jeff Wang Lab/Mechanical Engineering): Single Quantum Dot-Based Multiplexed Point Mutation Detection by Gap Ligase Chain Reaction (10:35 a.m.)
• Andrew Wong (Peter Searson Lab/Materials Science and Engineering): Intravisation into an artificial blood vessel (10:50 a.m.)
• Brian Keeley: (Jeff Wang Lab/Mechanical Engineering): Overcoming detection limitations of DNA methylation in plasma and serum of cancer patients through utilization of nanotechnology. (11:05 a.m.)
• Sebastian Barretto (Sharon Gerecht Lab/Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering): Development of Hydrogel Microfibers to Study Angiogenesis (11:20 a.m.)

Johns Hopkins Physical Sciences-Oncology Center

Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence