I'm thrilled to share my first (co-)senior author paper, out today in @ScienceAdvances. Wacky idea turned to potentially transformative technology in the hands of @absolutelybeaky, guidance from @SMitragotri and support from Morgan Goetz. https://www.seas.harvard.edu/news/2020/11/ionic-forcefield-nanoparticles 1/

I asked @SMitragotri - what would you fix about nanoparticles if you could? He immediately replied "the protein corona. Could you make an ionic liquid to fix that?" I said I wasn't sure, but I thought that it was possible. 2/

Coming from (nano)electrochemistry, I knew that ILs arranged at charged surfaces. What is a charged nanoparticle but a tiny electrode? 3/

So @absolutelybeaky set about screening many many ILs. Could we find some that effectively hid the NPs from serum to inhibit or slow protein corona formation, which stops the NPs from getting to where they need to go? 4/

It turns out the answer is YES! Not only do certain ILs stably attach to NP surfaces for weeks, but they also protect the surfaces amazingly in pure mouse serum! 5/

Going in vivo, we noticed something weird. We were successfully avoiding the liver and spleen (hooray!), but at 24 hrs post-injection, ~50% of the injected dose was in the lungs. What on Earth?? 6/

It turns out that the IL coated particles were spontaneously hitching a ride onto red blood cells post-injection (then making their way to the lungs and shearing off there) 7/

We're working hard here at @UnivMSResearch to work out exactly what is going on, but it's clear that ILs have huge potential to mediate NP-blood interactions, and I'm super excited to start unravelling their potential 8/

None of this would be possible without @absolutelybeaky's work - her determination, persistence, passion is the lifeblood of this story, and I'm so grateful to get to continue to work with her here. 9/

And of course, to @SMitragotri - who let me explore this while still in his lab. How many people could say that their mentor gave them the freedom and support to pursue a crazy idea like this? I am forever changed by his leadership. 10/

That's all from me! Hit me up if you have questions about the work! Here or at [email protected]! 11/11