CABS Seminar: MOLECULAR IMAGING FOR PERSONALIZED DIAGNOSIS AND PRECISION MEDICINE

Date: April 7, 2018 @ 1:30 pm – @ 4:00 pm
Location: Hanqi Investments (1633 Bayshore Highway, Suite 280, Burlingame, CA 94010)

Please register online. Online registration is free. Onsite registration is $10.

1:30 - 2:00PM check-in, onsite registration and networking

2:00PM - 4:00PM Seminars


Title of seminar: Molecularly Engineered Nanoparticles to Advance Personalized Diagnostics and Therapeutics

Aihua Fu, Ph.D. is a nanobiotechnologist and an entrepreneur. She is the co-Founder and CEO of NVIGEN Inc., a nanobiotech startup dedicated to developing and commercializing the best nanoparticles for biological research, diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Before she spearheaded the founding of NVIGEN with the support of serial biotechnology entrepreneur Dr. Guo-Liang Yu and other Silicon Valley investors, technologists and entrepreneurs, Aihua was trained as a postdoc at Stanford University Center of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence under the supervision of Prof. Shan X. Wang and Prof. Sam S. Gambhir to engineer nanoparticles with enhanced properties for in vitro diagnostics and in vivo cancer imaging and drug delivery applications. Aihua received her Ph.D. from the Chemistry Department of University of California at Berkeley with Prof. Paul Alivisatos, which built a solid foundation for her understanding of the unique properties of nanoparticles and their huge potential in helping define personalized disease diagnostics and therapy. Her nanoparticle research and product development efforts were also supported by NIH Pathway to Independence Award and NIH SBIR Awards.

NVIGEN Overview.  NVIGEN has developed a platform of molecularly engineered nanoparticles that can be tailored and automated to enable a broad range of diagnostic and therapeutic products advancing the personalized medicine revolution.  The particles have been engineered 1) to capture nucleic acids, proteins, and cells with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity, enabling low-cost, highly accurate diagnostics, or 2) to enhance the efficacy of therapeutics by providing targeted drug delivery or better T-cell activation and expansion for more effective cell therapy. NVIGEN holds and has exclusive rights to 7 patents, with an additional 11 patents pending, covering compositions of matter and a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic applications.


Title of seminar: Molecular Imaging in the Era of Precision Medicine

Dr. Zhen Cheng is an Associate Professor of Radiology and a member of the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), BioX program, Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection and Stanford Cancer Center. He currently leads the Cancer Molecular Imaging Chemistry Laboratory of the MIPS where he is developing novel molecular probes, non-invasive imaging techniques and bionanotechnology for the multimodality early detection of cancer.

Dr. Cheng has published over 200 peer reviewed articles (From Google Scholar, H-index: 56; Citation >10600), 9 book chapters, and he is a co-inventor of 14 patents. Dr. Cheng is the immediate past President of Chinese American Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, and he was the Board Director of the Radiopharmaceutical Sciences Council in the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. He has served as a reviewer for numerous funding agencies including NIH, DOD, DOE, German Research Foundation, National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Agency for Science, Research & Technology (A*STAR) in Singapore, etc. He has also served as an active reviewer for over 100 research journals such as Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Science Translational Medicine, JACS, Angewandte Chemie, JNM, etc., abstract reviewer and session chair for numerous meetings (SNM, WMIC, SRS, etc.). Moreover, he is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Biomedical Physics; Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine and sits on the editorial board of numerous peer-reviewed journals including Clinical Cancer Research, Bioconjugate Chemistry, Amino Acids, etc.


Free Online Registration – $0 (USD)

.