Bioinformatics Seminar
Time: 11AM
Venue: Zoom Webinar
5 October 2021
Mathematical models of nanoparticle-cell interactions
Stuart JohnstonUnimelb (School of Mathematics and Statistics)
Nanoparticles have the potential to revolutionise medicine via the targeted delivery of therapeutic, diagnostic and imaging agents. The delivery of nanoparticles to cells is a complex tapestry of interwoven biological, chemical and physical processes. As such, it is not yet fully understood how nanoparticle design choices influence the uptake of nanoparticles by cells. I will discuss the development of mathematical models that allow us to isolate the processes of nanoparticle-cell interactions from the physical transport processes of nanoparticle delivery. These models provide a method for robust comparison of experiments, independent of experimental conditions. I will demonstrate, using a library of nanoparticle-cell association assay data, that these models are required to obtain meaningful estimates of nanoparticle-cell interactions. Further, I will detail extensions to these models, and use them to examine heterogeneity present in nanoparticle-cell association assay data, and use the modelling framework to determine the biological factors that result in heterogeneous nanoparticle delivery.