SEMINAR: �The application of a tissue-penetrating peptide as a specific & unified marker for chronic inflammatory-associated diseases."

Dr. Juliana Hamzah is an American Heart Association Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Erkki Ruoslahti at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, California. She obtained her PhD at UWA and did her first postdoctoral training in Prof. Ruth Ganss’s laboratory at WAIMR (2006-2009). Her research work in Prof. Ganss’s laboratory was on cancer angiogenesis, specifically on vessel remodeling and vessel-targeting strategies which resulted in publications in Nature, J Clin Invest and J Immunol. Since joining Prof. Ruoslahti research team, Dr. Hamzah has extended her research interests to develop targeting strategies for inflammatory macrophages. In this seminar, she will present her recently published work (PNAS, in press) on the tissue penetrating characteristics of a peptide called LyP-1, that specifically home to atherosclerotic plaques and can be used as a probe to image plaques in vivo. She will discuss the use of LyP-1 as a specific and unified marker of differentiated macrophages in chronic inflammatory-associated diseases including cancer, atherosclerosis and skin dermatitis.