Abstract: 

Chemotherapy is the most extensively used treatment in the fight against malignant neoplasms. Unfortunately, chemotherapy use is plagued with numerous side effects.  These side effects are caused primarily because of the non-specific nature of the treatment as the drug is capable of killing normal and cancerous cells alike. Several drug delivery systems have been investigated to reduce these side effects by encapsulating the chemotherapeutic agent in a nano-sized carrier until it reaches the tumor site.  These carriers include: solid nanoparticles, micelles, liposomes and e-liposomes. Once the nanoparticle reaches the desired location, ultrasound is applied to release the chemotherapy drug directly to the cancer site, thus avoiding any interaction with the healthy cells in the body.  This way the adverse side effects of chemotherapy are minimized. 
This presentation will discuss two novel chemotherapy carriers (micelles and emulsion-Liposomes) used in conjunction with acoustic radiation to treat malignancies.

Biography:

Dr. Ghaleb A. Husseini graduated with a PhD in Chemical Engineering (Biomedical Engineering emphasis) from Brigham Young University in 2001 and joined the American University of Sharjah (AUS in the United Arab Emirates) as an Assistant Professor in the Chemical Engineering Department January 2004. He was promoted to Associate Professor and Professor in 2008 and 2013, respectively. Two years ago, Dr. Husseini took a sabbatical leave which enabled me to travel to Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, and work in Dr. Jeffrey Hubbell’s laboratory).   
He works is in the area of ultrasound activated drug delivery. His research involves sequestering chemotherapeutic agents in liposomes, micelles and other nanoparticles.  The contents of this drug delivery system can then be released using ultrasound (US).  This way the drug has minimal interactions with the healthy cells in the host body, and it can carry out its therapeutic effect at the sonicated cancerous region only and reduce the undesirable side effects associated with chemotherapy.  He has recently established a Drug Delivery laboratory at AUS using an internal grant.   
Dr. Husseini has published 76 journal articles (in addition to 1 book chapter and 1 patent) and 40 conference papers/abstracts.  In addition, he was a Theme Editor for a special issue in Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews and is currently serving on the Editorial Board of the International Review of Applied Sciences and Engineering (IRASE). He has been elected into the Distinguished Lecturer Program- IEEE-EMBS (Jan 2014- Dec 2015).