Date: March 13, 2025
Time: 12pm EDT / 5pm CET
Join us for this Trainee Spotlight webinar featuring trainees Jessica Bennett, and Chris Saab, all of whom won poster awards at the 2024 OTS Annual Meeting.
Title: Reprogramming DNA with a Small Molecule
Presentation Description:
Nature elegantly demonstrates that structure informs function. By harnessing this inspiration and creating new structures from DNA, we can construct materials with improved functions. This talk will explore this structure-function relationship by exploring the small molecule/DNA hybrid materials developed in the Sleiman lab. The structure, physical properties and applications of these new DNA structures will be presented.
Speaker:
Title: Enhancing Aptamer Diversity for Targeted Therapeutics Using DNA-Encoded Libraries
Presentation Description:
Aptamers are promising precision tools for targeting disease-causing proteins, but their clinical application is hindered by limited binding affinity, poor stability, and rapid degradation. To overcome these challenges, chemically modified components such as lipids, peptides, and sugars can be incorporated at specific nucleotide positions to enhance their stability, specificity, and binding strength. By employing a DNA “barcode” system, it is possible to generate a large library of 300,000 aptamers and efficiently identify high-affinity candidates for disease-related proteins, particularly those involved in cancer progression. This approach holds great potential for advancing precision therapies.
