Hasan Uludag, PhD

Area of Study / Keywords

Biomaterials Nanomaterials and Nanofabrication Gene Therapy Cancer Therapy

About

Dr. Hasan Uludağ has been with the University of Alberta since 1997, currently based at the Department of Chemical & Materials Engineering. He holds joint appoints at the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry and Faculty of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences. Dr. Uludağ is directing interdisciplinary research programs on experimental therapeutics, specifically focusing of designing functional biomaterials to realize the potential of new, unconventional therapeutic agents. His research activity is conducted in the context of bone regeneration and anti-cancer therapies. Dr. Uludağ is actively involved in various biomaterials societies around the World and is an elected Fellow of the International Union of Society of Biomaterials Science and Engineering (IUS-BSE). Besides acting as the lead editor for Frontiers in Biomaterials, he is serving on the editorial board of 6 international journals. Dr. Uludağ published >160 peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Uludağ obtained dual B.Sc. degrees in Biomedical Engineering and Biology from Brown University (Providence, RI) in 1989, specializing in biomedical engineering with a strong emphasis in biological sciences. He then completed his Ph.D. degree in 1993 at the Department of Chemical Engineering & Applied Chemistry at the University of Toronto, where he developed a strong expertise in polymeric biomaterials. He spent four years in an industrial setting (Genetics Institute Inc.; Boston, MA), where he contributed to development of a tissue engineered bone-inducing BMP device for clinical use. 

Research

Cancer Therapy with DNA and RNA. Cancer arises from uncontrolled cell proliferation due to aberrant expression of certain proteins, resulting in loss of control over the cellular physiology. A permanent solution to cancer is to target those proteins with aberrant expression and silence (eradicate) them. The newly discovered silencer RNAs (siRNAs and sgRNAs) can be designed to target any protein at will. Their delivery into the cells, however, is problematic. The highly charged RNAs cannot cross cell membrane and it gets quickly degraded in the body. Our goal is to design 'nano'-engineered vesicles, based on architecturally-controlled polymers, to facilitate cellular uptake of RNAs (picture). We are developing amphiphilic polymers composed of cationic and lipophilic groups, since these features provide an optimal balance between packaging of RNA into nano-vesicles and cellular penetration. Sub-projects in this area include materials chemistry to prepare the biomaterials, pharmaceutical studies to investigate siRNA delivery, and development of anti-cancer models for therapy.

Keywords: Biomaterials, drug delivery, gene therapy, tissue engineering, anti-cancer drugs