Paula T. Hammond

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American Academy of Arts and Sciences Recognizes Paula Hammond

KI faculty member Paula Hammond, the David H. Koch Professor in Engineering, was elected this year to the prestigious national society. The AAAS recognizes leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs. For more than 200 years the Academy has honored leaders from various disciplines, including George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill. It counts more than 250 Nobel laureates and more than 60 Pulitzer Prize winners among its current membership. more...

Technology Workshop: Paula Hammond

September 20, 2012 Drug Delivery
Paula Hammond, Koch Institute watch...

"Human Body on a Chip" Research

Four KI members are part of research team funded by Defense Advanced Research Project (DARPA) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) to create a versatile platform capable of accurately predicting drug and vaccine efficacy, toxicity, and pharmacokinetics in preclinical testing. more...

Paula Hammond Named One of a Dozen Bostonians Changing the World

The Koch Institute member was one of a small group of Hub residents recognized for their contributions to society by the Boston Globe Magazine. Hammond was honored for the diversity and practical application of her lab's projects, which include a way of packing RNA segments into tiny but hardy spheres that can find their way to diseased cells and silence genes that have gone awry. more...

Tiny Sponge-Like Spheres May Be New Way to Deliver Cancer Treatment

KI researchers have found a way to pack RNA into microspheres to knock down the expression of specific genes. The delivery system's dense arrangement can avoid degradation until it reaches its target and holds promise for cancer therapeutics and other chronic diseases. The findings are reported in the February 26th edition of Nature Materials. more...

Targeted Drug Delivery 'Cloaks' Cancer Drugs

KI engineers have designed a new type of drug-delivery nanoparticle that exploits a trait shared by almost all tumors: They are more acidic than healthy tissues. Such particles could target nearly any type of tumor, and can be designed to carry virtually any type of drug, says KI's Paula Hammond, the senior author of a paper describing the particles in the journal ACS Nano. The new MIT particles are cloaked in a polymer layer that protects them from being degraded by the bloodstream. However, the KI team designed this outer layer to fall off after entering the slightly more acidic environment near a tumor, revealing another layer that is able to penetrate individual tumor cells. more...