Noor Momin, who joined the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the Department of Bioengineering in January as a Stevenson Foundation tenured assistant professor for innovation, envisioned becoming a doctor when she was growing up. For someone interested in science, becoming a doctor seemed like a tangible way to make a difference. It wasn’t until she entered college that she realized the impact she could make as a bioengineer.
Noor Momin, Stevenson Foundation Tenured Assistant Professor of Innovation. (Image: Courtesy of Penn Engineering Today)
“I was taping microscope slides together,” Momin recalls of his first experience as an undergraduate researcher at the University of Texas at Austin. “I didn’t even know what a Ph.D. was.”
Momin understood the extent to which lipids, the water-repellent molecules that make up cell membranes (and fats and oils), can switch between highly fluid and less fluid configurations. It wasn’t until he co-authored the first paper investigating it. How biotechnology can impact medicine. “Someone could use the paper to design a drug,” Momin says.
In Momin’s view, conventional wisdom that you can treat the heart like a mechanical pump, replace its pipes, or handle its throughput to prevent it from clogging in the first place, is a sign of immunity in the development of heart disease. The important role of the system is being overshadowed.
For example, when plaque builds up in blood vessels, monocytes, a type of white blood cell that normally protects the body from pathogens, can become lodged within the plaque, causing inflammation and eventually leading to plaque rupture.
One way Momin suggests dealing with this kind of problem is to create new antibodies. This is a Y-shaped protein that our immune system uses to fight invaders, binding them tightly together like a linebacker wrapping around an enemy.
In collaboration with the lab of Michael J. Mitchell, an associate professor of bioengineering, Momin has already developed a new class of nanoparticles, medicinal vehicles small enough to fit thousands into a single human cell. . “We’re really trying to hone that communication,” Momin says. “I’m using my group’s protein engineering expertise to modify them with antibodies that induce them.”
This summer, Momin’s lab will be the first to move into a new space at One U City Square, bringing together researchers from Penn Engineering and Penn Medicine.
This story is by Ian Scheffler. For more information, visit Penn Engineering Today.
