DNA Nanostructures for Cellular Delivery of Therapeutics
Dr. Hanadi Sleiman (McGill)

DNA nanotechnology has emerged as an exceptionally programmable tool to organize materials.  Most current strategies rely on assembling a complex DNA scaffold, often containing hundreds of different strands, and using it to position materials into the desired functional structure. Our research group has developed a different approach to build DNA nanostructures. Starting from a minimum number of DNA components, we create structures that are environmentally responsive and intrinsically reconfigurable.  We will show the construction of 3D-DNA host structures, such as cages, nanotubes and sequence-controlled polymers, that encapsulate and selectively release drugs and materials, and accomplish anisotropic 3D-organization. These nanostructures are promising for drug and oligonucleotide delivery. Their 3D-morphology allows them to readily enter mammalian cells and silence gene expression to a significantly greater extent than their component strands, and it modulates their in vivo behavior. We designed a DNA cube that recognizes a cancer-specific gene product, unzips and releases its therapeutic cargo as a result, thus acting as a conditional drug delivery vehicle. We will also describe a method to ‘print’ DNA patterns onto other materials, thus beginning to address the issue of scalability for DNA nanotechnology. Finally, we will discuss the ability of small molecules to reprogram the assembly of DNA, away from Watson-Crick base-pairing and into new motifs.

Hanadi Sleiman is a Professor of Chemistry and Canada Research Chair in DNA Nanoscience at McGill University. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University, and carried out her postdoctoral studies in supramolecular chemistry, in the laboratory of Prof. Jean-Marie Lehn at the Université Louis Pasteur in France. She joined the faculty at McGill University in 1999, where she heads a research group focused on using the biological molecule DNA as a template to assemble nanostructured materials.  Sleiman was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2016), received the Izatt-Christensen Award (highest international award in Supramolecular Chemistry, 2016), the Swiss Chemical Society Lectureship (2012), the E. Gordon Young Award (Chemical Institute of Canada, 2011), the Strem Award (Canadian Society for Chemistry, 2009), the NSERC Discovery Accelerator Award (2008), the Dawson award (McGill, 2004 and 2010), and she was named Cottrell Scholar (Research Corporation, 2002).  She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of J. Am. Chem. Soc., Chem., ChemBioChem and Nanoscale Horizons, and was a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Nanoelectronics program (2004-2012). She received the McGill Principal’s Prize (2002) and the Leo Yaffe Award (2005) for Excellence in Teaching.

She is the guest of Dr. Rafik Naccache