The newest faculty member to join The Herbert Wertheim UF Scripps Institute for Biomedical Innovation & Technology, Jinyoung Kang, Ph.D., is blazing a path into a small — very small — yet growing discipline called nanoscale neuro-engineering.
Kang’s research aims to help millions of people with conditions that involve dysregulated brain signaling, including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, epilepsy and autism, by inventing tools and therapies that are so tiny they may be about one-billionth of a meter across.
“I want to figure out targetable molecules to understand the biological mechanisms underlying brain diseases,” said Kang, “and then I want to employ my nanomedicine expertise to develop new therapeutics.”
Seeing and working with such small materials requires ingenuity. Kang’s thesis work at the University of California, San Diego, focused on nanoengineering. She plans to put that expertise to use at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute as an assistant professor in the neuroscience department. She previously worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as a postdoctoral researcher alongside Edward Boyden, Ph.D., an HHMI investigator who develops tools such as optogenetics and expansion microscopy to map and control brain circuits; and Guoping Feng, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at MIT and the Broad Institute, whose research focuses on how synapses develop and function, and on how disruptions contribute to brain disorders.
Before Kang joined MIT, her studies at UC San Diego focused on designing potential nanomedicines which could be used to treat cancer or brain injuries. She used biodegradable, porous silicon as the delivery vehicle.
“A nanomedicine is simply a drug that’s inside of a nanoparticle, or together with a nanoparticle. We can engineer these to increase therapeutic and targeting efficiency,” she said.
At MIT, she co-invented new expansion microscopy tools to see the molecules that traverse synapses, specifically, a method called expansion revealing and multiplexed expansion revealing microscopy. These techniques allow scientists to see molecules that would be too small or crowded for a traditional light microscope to resolve, smaller than 20 nm. Kang said she uses antibodies, complex proteins from the immune system, to anchor biological samples to a swellable gel. She then expands the gel with water. The sample is thereby stretched by a factor of 20, Kang said, which allows otherwise hidden molecules to be visualized.
She has used this and other techniques to study how genetic changes alter the signaling of specialized neurons involved in regulating sensory processing and network synchronization, known as parvalbumin (PV) interneurons.
“We identified 174 different excitatory synapses in PV interneurons, and 45 of them are tightly associated with autism risk genes,” Kang said. “Using this and other techniques, we found that manipulation of one gene can alter other synapses and trigger seizures.”
Kang studied chemical and nanoengineering at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. She chose Jupiter to launch her academic career because of its thriving and innovative neuroscience community, its collaborative research environment and the drug discovery expertise at The Wertheim UF Scripps Institute, she said.
“This is a good place to turn discoveries from the lab into potential therapies for patients,” Kang said. “I’m very pleased to collaborate with such a talented team of scientists.”
Patrick Griffin, Ph.D., scientific director of the institute, said Kang’s productivity and history of patient-focused research bode well for the discoveries she will make at the institute.
“Her pioneering work at the intersection of engineering, chemistry, and neuroscience positions her as a rising leader in the field,” Griffin said. “Her inventive spirit and commitment to translational science will further strengthen our institute’s mission to transform fundamental discoveries into meaningful advances for patients.”