{"id":203602,"date":"2012-09-04T16:33:53","date_gmt":"2012-09-04T16:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=12943"},"modified":"2025-01-30T21:40:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T02:40:44","slug":"dr-yong-wang-makes-drug-delivery-breakthrough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/09\/dr-yong-wang-makes-drug-delivery-breakthrough\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Yong Wang Makes Drug Delivery Breakthrough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Heike Brueckner<\/p>\n<p>Associate professor Yong Wang (Chemical Engineering), along with doctoral student Mark Battig and Dr. Boonchoy Soontornworajit, has made innovative and invaluable improvements to the drug-loaded implantable hydrogels used for drug delivery. This innovation will allow medical professionals to both treat complex disease and facilitate the healing process in stages.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/yong-wang1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-12905 img-responsive lazyload\" title=\"yong wang1\" data-src=\"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/yong-wang1-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 225px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 225\/300;\" \/><\/a>Previously, implants could be externally triggered to release medication to diseased tissue at a given time, but such implants could deliver only a single drug. \u00a0With the advances of the team, implants can now deliver multiple drugs, in sequential order, at specified intervals.<\/p>\n<p>To create such gels, Dr. Wang and his research team added DNA aptamers to the existing gels. To release the drug, the gel is injected with a short DNA strand that binds to the protein-binding site of the aptamer, triggering it to release the protein. The gel releases a given drug determined by the DNA sequence injected.<\/p>\n<p>This research was described in a paper entitled \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/pubs.acs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1021\/ja305238a?prevSearch=Battig&amp;searchHistoryKey=\">Programmable Release of Multiple Protein Drugs from Aptamer-Functionalized Hydrogels via Nucleic Acid Hybridization<\/a>,\u201d which was published in the <em>Journal of the American Chemical Society<\/em>, among the most prestigious journals in the fields of chemistry and chemical engineering. The research was later highlighted in the prestigious magazine, <em>Chemical &amp; Engineering News<\/em>, and publications of the Royal Society of Chemistry.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr. Yong Wang and two colleagues have made innovative and invaluable improvements to the drug-loaded implantable hydrogels used for drug delivery<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":224808,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2110],"class_list":["post-203602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 11:37:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224809,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203602\/revisions\/224809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/224808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203602"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=203602"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=203602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}