Innovation in the Lab: Engineering New Ways to Treat Disease

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05/03/2019 Added

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Biomedical engineer Angie Pannier hopes some day her research will help treat disease and change people’s lives. In this episode of Faculty 101, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Green sits down with Dr. Pannier to discuss her research and how she finds work-life balance. Learn more about the Pannier Lab ›› http://pannierlab.unl.edu/

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[00:00:00.670]Come on in.
[00:00:01.970]Angie Pannier welcomes
[00:00:03.380]University of Nebraska Lincoln Chancellor,
[00:00:05.760]Ronnie Green, into her East Campus lab.
[00:00:08.600]So, we mainly focus on gene delivery
[00:00:10.910]and tissue engineering.
[00:00:12.450]Introduces her graduate students.
[00:00:14.420]Chancellor Green, this is Albert and Amy,
[00:00:16.380]these are two PhD students in the lab.
[00:00:17.723]Hi, hi Albert, how are you?
[00:00:18.620]And talks about her research.
[00:00:20.390]Projects, we have about 10 different projects
[00:00:21.990]that we run, either alone or in collaboration
[00:00:24.220]with the researchers at UNL, UNMC,
[00:00:26.050]and the U.S. Meat Animal Research Center and--
[00:00:28.540]Dr. Pannier is a biomedical engineer.
[00:00:31.170]Dr. Green's background is animal science and genetics.
[00:00:34.740]In the lab, they speak the same language.
[00:00:37.420]We want that's there, and crisper,
[00:00:39.210]you just kind of deliver scissors--
[00:00:40.884]Yup.
[00:00:41.717]And they go in, and do editing
[00:00:42.630]of the native genome for you and you can do it with--
[00:00:45.340]And they share an insider's view
[00:00:47.400]on changes in technology.
[00:00:48.900]Because traditional ways of doing that
[00:00:50.310]was very laborious or it was difficult
[00:00:52.170]or it had a lot of errors, and this--
[00:00:53.757]Trust me, I know.
[00:00:54.940](both laughing)
[00:00:56.213]You wanna come back to lab and try some crisper?
[00:00:57.233]Restriction endonucleases, boy do I--
[00:00:58.831]Yeah, right, you don't have to do any of that.
[00:00:59.680]I'm Mary Jane Bruce,
[00:01:00.900]and in this episode of Faculty 101,
[00:01:03.480]I turn the hosting duties over to Ronnie Green.
[00:01:06.740]In his interview, Dr. Green finds out
[00:01:08.710]more about Angie Pannier's career path,
[00:01:11.140]her life outside the lab, and her bacon project.
[00:01:15.026](upbeat music)
[00:01:16.187][Female Professor] Okay, you should switch partners now.
[00:01:17.650]To be able to inspire young people
[00:01:19.610](students laughing)
[00:01:20.642][Another Female Professor] Ace your finals.
[00:01:21.587][Another Male Professor] It's really rewarding
[00:01:22.928][Different Female Professor] I love the students.
[00:01:25.010]Welcome to Faculty 101,
[00:01:27.230]life hacks and success stories from Nebraska faculty.
[00:01:30.645](upbeat music)
[00:01:34.210]First up, orientation.
[00:01:36.480]Who is Angie Pannier, and how did she get here?
[00:01:39.540]So Angie, I know you've got a beautiful family.
[00:01:41.420]Tell us a little bit about your family.
[00:01:42.750]Yes, my husband Tyler is a software developer
[00:01:45.360]here in town, and is a graduate of UNL,
[00:01:48.990]an alumni of computer engineering.
[00:01:51.150]And our daughter Lily will be 12 in May,
[00:01:54.560]and she's a dancer, a theater person,
[00:01:58.190]a singer, all types of performing.
[00:02:00.950]And our son Emerson is eight, and he is
[00:02:04.590]in TaeKwonDo and really loves video games,
[00:02:07.510]I think like all eight year olds.
[00:02:09.246]So what makes UNL a great a place to be?
[00:02:12.140]Well, I mean, honestly, this is what happened.
[00:02:16.320]I grew up, I had no idea really what I was gonna be.
[00:02:20.100]I was smart and my parents wanted me to be a doctor.
[00:02:23.900]They hadn't gone to college.
[00:02:26.150]I grew up in Fremont,
[00:02:27.150]and doctors were smart, and I think that was all
[00:02:29.810]that they could tell me, right?
[00:02:30.643]That you should go be a doctor.
[00:02:32.040]And I did not want to be a doctor.
[00:02:34.820]I didn't know, I loved math, science, and physics.
[00:02:37.840]I loved music, I loved writing,
[00:02:41.420]and I loved clothes. (laughs)
[00:02:44.110]It's kind of exactly who I am now, right?
[00:02:47.695]And I was either gonna major in oboe performance
[00:02:50.790]or engineering, that was what I was gonna major in.
[00:02:53.490]And I had a high school physics teacher
[00:02:55.770]and she started talking to me about engineering,
[00:02:58.340]I'd never heard of this, my dad said,
[00:02:59.640]why do you want to drive a train?
[00:03:00.850]I mean, we had no context of it.
[00:03:03.120]And she started talking to me about it
[00:03:05.180]and it was, I went to an engineering camp at Iowa State
[00:03:08.270]and I kinda liked it.
[00:03:09.400]And it was at the time where I just picked a major
[00:03:12.490]and it was bioengineering or biological systems engineering.
[00:03:15.680]And I came here for four years
[00:03:17.850]and then stayed for my master's.
[00:03:19.170]And I just loved this place
[00:03:20.400]and I couldn't believe the opportunities
[00:03:22.724]that UNL had given me.
[00:03:24.310]Like, this was beyond my wildest dreams
[00:03:26.420]or anything that had ever happened to me as a child.
[00:03:28.790]And I had a wonderful childhood,
[00:03:29.790]it's just I couldn't imagine this.
[00:03:31.870]And so when I had the opportunity to come back
[00:03:33.930]and be a faculty member at a place that
[00:03:35.490]changed my life, and that I felt such loyalty to,
[00:03:38.420]I just, how could I say no to that?
[00:03:40.250]And I remember pinching myself
[00:03:41.920]for the first few days that I was a faculty member,
[00:03:43.870]here, at the place that I love.
[00:03:46.850]And I remember after the first couple weeks
[00:03:49.420]of being a faculty member, my dad called
[00:03:50.670]and he goes, how does it feel to finally
[00:03:52.210]not be learning anymore?
[00:03:53.100]I go, oh my gosh! (laughs)
[00:03:54.360]I've learned more as a faculty member
[00:03:55.420]than I ever learned as a student.
[00:03:58.540]But that's why I love it,
[00:03:59.590]is that you get paid to learn.
[00:04:01.400]And so yeah, no, I wouldn't dream of being anywhere else.
[00:04:04.160]This place did everything for me,
[00:04:05.630]it changed my life.
[00:04:06.601](upbeat music)
[00:04:07.434]Next, lab work.
[00:04:08.960]A deep dive into Dr. Pannier's research.
[00:04:11.569](upbeat music)
[00:04:14.960]So talk a little bit about
[00:04:15.957]what the goals are of your research, to start.
[00:04:19.029]Sure.
[00:04:19.862]So gene delivery is the transfer of genes
[00:04:21.720]into a cell typically for a therapeutic
[00:04:23.870]or for potentially a diagnostic purpose.
[00:04:26.110]And there's many different ways to get DNA
[00:04:28.930]or genes into cells.
[00:04:30.630]Viruses are very effective at it
[00:04:32.320]and have been evolved over billions of years to do that.
[00:04:35.680]And actually, we now have gene therapy products
[00:04:37.920]on the market that use viral vectors, is what we call them,
[00:04:40.300]to deliver genes inside cells.
[00:04:41.930]But for some applications, viral vectors
[00:04:43.740]don't work as well, they have some safety concerns,
[00:04:46.570]scale out concerns, toxicity, immune response concerns.
[00:04:49.530]So we work in the general area called
[00:04:51.230]non-viral gene delivery.
[00:04:52.500]Which means we use materials to kind of mimic
[00:04:54.700]a virus to deliver genes inside of cells.
[00:04:57.830]And non-viral is safer and more tunable
[00:05:01.350]than viral delivery, but it suffers from inefficiency.
[00:05:03.900]And so a major focus of my lab
[00:05:05.820]is trying to increase the efficiency
[00:05:07.840]of non-viral gene delivery.
[00:05:09.450]Now, a lot of wonderful scientists in the world
[00:05:12.110]focus on engineering those materials
[00:05:14.350]that are used to shuttle those genes inside of cells,
[00:05:17.170]and we do some of that work, which I can talk about,
[00:05:20.030]but a lot of my lab, we focus on what we call
[00:05:22.060]priming the cells.
[00:05:23.230]So rather than worrying about this shuttle
[00:05:25.210]we're worrying about what's gonna receive the genes.
[00:05:28.100]And so we do things to try to make that cell
[00:05:30.980]more receptive to receiving DNA.
[00:05:33.880]And so we do that with chemical priming
[00:05:35.400]which means basically giving drugs to the cells
[00:05:37.410]to change their status,
[00:05:38.900]and we really pioneered that in the world,
[00:05:41.800]as well as physical priming
[00:05:43.510]which is we can change the surface that the cells
[00:05:45.850]are sitting on if it's in a culture dish.
[00:05:47.700]And just, for some reason, cells,
[00:05:50.030]it matters to them what carpet they're on
[00:05:51.780]or what flooring they're on
[00:05:53.220]and so we can do that as well.
[00:05:55.020]And so what I'm proud about in our lab
[00:05:57.660]is that we also always have one foot
[00:05:59.480]in basic science, and one foot in application.
[00:06:01.910]So we wanna understand this on one hand
[00:06:04.420]but then we wanna try to apply it.
[00:06:05.830]And so some of our applications for this
[00:06:08.080]is delivering genes to adult stem cells
[00:06:11.310]that aren't natively found in your body,
[00:06:12.970]that are used for repair, regeneration,
[00:06:15.300]genetically modify them in a way to make them a therapy.
[00:06:18.536]They become the therapy.
[00:06:20.720]And so we've recently started looking into
[00:06:23.210]Alzheimer's Disease, osteoarthritis.
[00:06:26.020]And then separately we also,
[00:06:28.230]I talk about everyone else engineering the materials,
[00:06:30.250]we do that as well.
[00:06:31.280]And so we really are focusing on engineering
[00:06:33.070]materials for oral DNA delivery.
[00:06:34.930]That's sort of a part of the field
[00:06:38.590]that is not as well-studied.
[00:06:40.180]And so we have developed the first system
[00:06:42.460]that uses zein, a protein from corn,
[00:06:44.730]and chitosan, a polysaccharide from shrimp,
[00:06:47.060]so it is shrimp and grits.
[00:06:49.090]Native materials, yeah.
[00:06:49.923]Yeah, right.
[00:06:50.756]To deliver DNA into the intestinal space.
[00:06:53.760]And we're really interested in that
[00:06:55.060]for DNA vaccines and also treating local bowel,
[00:06:59.720]intestinal diseases.
[00:07:00.990]So what are some of the challenges
[00:07:03.200]that researchers in this field face
[00:07:06.010]that you're working on in your lab?
[00:07:07.700]You've got a huge lab that's very, very successful,
[00:07:10.120]pioneering things in this field,
[00:07:12.510]and nationally and internationally recognized.
[00:07:15.600]So what are some of the kind of challenges
[00:07:18.050]that you face in this research?
[00:07:20.212]There's only three challenges in gene therapy.
[00:07:22.410]And that's just delivery, delivery, and delivery.
[00:07:24.578](both laughing)
[00:07:25.411]So that's our challenge.
[00:07:27.910]You know, turns out nature has evolved many ways
[00:07:31.740]for us to not put DNA into a cell
[00:07:33.730]that should not be there.
[00:07:34.730]And so we are, that is our challenge,
[00:07:37.380]is how do we make sure that we can efficiently
[00:07:39.660]get it into the right cells, the right number of cells,
[00:07:42.840]have that gene expressed or basically read
[00:07:45.030]at the right level.
[00:07:46.510]So that is a big challenge in our field.
[00:07:49.240]Talk a little bit about the support
[00:07:50.777]for your research.
[00:07:51.610]Sure, well, so I have to give a shout-out
[00:07:54.010]that the American Heart Association
[00:07:55.260]was the first grant that I ever got,
[00:07:56.660]a scientist development grant,
[00:07:57.493]and that started a lot of this priming work
[00:07:59.560]of using drugs to try to increase cell responsiveness.
[00:08:03.270]We're currently funded by NSF,
[00:08:05.440]the last year of my career grant.
[00:08:07.720]And we're funded by the NIH,
[00:08:11.040]Director's New Innovator Award.
[00:08:12.850]And we're also funded by the USDA
[00:08:15.070]for some of our tissue engineering work.
[00:08:16.480]So we actually have a whole other project
[00:08:18.080]on tissue engineering pig embryos,
[00:08:20.010]not to mimic human embryos or anything,
[00:08:21.690]it's actually to grow better pigs for more bacon,
[00:08:24.530]that's my bacon project.
[00:08:26.030]So, and that's funded by the USDA.
[00:08:27.320]So we actually have a large portfolio of funding,
[00:08:30.610]and then we also have industry funding in the lab,
[00:08:32.500]so we actually run contracts with industry.
[00:08:34.480]And part of what you mentioned
[00:08:35.660]was the NIH New Innovator Award that you received here
[00:08:39.370]just this past year.
[00:08:41.503]2017.
[00:08:42.336]It's a big deal.
[00:08:43.169]It is, it is a big deal.
[00:08:44.002]It's a really big deal.
[00:08:44.835]Yeah.
[00:08:45.668]So talk a little bit about that.
[00:08:46.501]What is that program?
[00:08:48.500]So that's a different type of grant mechanism
[00:08:50.980]from the National Institutes of Health
[00:08:52.590]that funds basically a person
[00:08:54.210]and not necessarily a project.
[00:08:55.960]So it's a different way to write a grant proposal,
[00:08:58.290]you don't write, I'm gonna do X, Y, and Z.
[00:09:00.830]You actually just kinda write, here's who I am
[00:09:03.190]and everything I'm thinking about.
[00:09:05.570]And the money is given as a single shot
[00:09:08.100]for five years with no strings attached,
[00:09:10.670]and this says go out and do your innovative stuff.
[00:09:14.220]I am the first Nebraskan to ever win that award
[00:09:16.620]or earn that award.
[00:09:17.680]I am the first person in the university system.
[00:09:20.230]And so it's really exciting.
[00:09:21.770]It also kind of connects you to all these other innovators
[00:09:24.440]across the country, so there's a yearly workshop
[00:09:27.330]or symposium.
[00:09:28.410]Networking in that light.
[00:09:29.624]Mm-hm, yeah.
[00:09:30.460]So it was quite an honor.
[00:09:31.750](upbeat music)
[00:09:33.970]Now it's time for a pop quiz,
[00:09:36.120]random questions, life hacks, and wisdom for all of us.
[00:09:39.902](upbeat music)
[00:09:41.910]So how do you moderate
[00:09:43.970]the mentoring with graduate students,
[00:09:46.810]and a large number of graduate students,
[00:09:48.600]and work that you do, the teaching work
[00:09:50.610]you do at the university,
[00:09:53.570]and you have a family and life.
[00:09:58.930]How do you moderate all of that?
[00:10:00.880]Oh, well, that's a question I get asked a lot
[00:10:03.030]and I think there is no one perfect answer.
[00:10:05.940]I'm very organized.
[00:10:08.030]And I am, I look not organized compared to my husband,
[00:10:11.270]so we're both engineers, we're both type A.
[00:10:15.620]And that wasn't a question about my family
[00:10:19.460]but it is a question about my family,
[00:10:20.890]because my family, my children,
[00:10:22.750]have only grown up knowing, well, that's a lab thing.
[00:10:25.269](laughs) Or we gotta be at the lab,
[00:10:26.600]or the lab's coming over, the lab's doing this.
[00:10:28.330]But I have lots of lists, I have a whole book of lists
[00:10:30.981]and lists, my book of lists is never far away.
[00:10:33.440]And my students would all attest that
[00:10:34.650]if I don't have my book of lists
[00:10:35.640]then there's nothing gonna get happening that day.
[00:10:38.597]I'm very organized,
[00:10:39.890]and I have a lot of good people around me.
[00:10:42.900]So I have the best graduate students in the world,
[00:10:45.410]I'll put 'em against anyone's.
[00:10:47.090]What advice would you give
[00:10:48.440]to an incoming freshman in the class of 2023?
[00:10:51.470]I have a few pieces of advice.
[00:10:53.480]One is you do wanna get involved.
[00:10:57.800]There are so many opportunities at UNL,
[00:10:59.691]you have to do it very cautiously and not overdo it,
[00:11:02.730]but try to do something that you've never done before,
[00:11:04.630]and I think that's part of college.
[00:11:07.510]More importantly is you have to learn
[00:11:09.270]how to manage your time, and have to do it really quickly.
[00:11:12.680]I think the great thing about UNL is
[00:11:14.310]we have many resources at the department level
[00:11:16.440]to the university level,
[00:11:17.630]and you need to make use of those.
[00:11:18.950]Because time's gonna be totally different to you
[00:11:21.320]than it's ever been before.
[00:11:23.380]You need to seek out and talk to professors
[00:11:25.780]especially if you feel that you are not
[00:11:28.120]getting the material or the grade's not
[00:11:29.783]what you think it should be.
[00:11:31.260]We are just people,
[00:11:32.600]and you need to talk to us.
[00:11:33.930]And if you need til the week of finals week
[00:11:35.710]to talk to us, that does not work.
[00:11:38.720]And then, the advice that people don't wanna give,
[00:11:41.740]but it's true, is that grades do matter.
[00:11:44.410]But there is the support system to help you.
[00:11:46.742](upbeat music)
[00:11:47.575]And finally, graduation day.
[00:11:49.690]Final thoughts from Angie Pannier.
[00:11:52.410]If you were to dream what you hope
[00:11:55.160]your research will do, the research in this area
[00:11:59.070]that you're working in and your students (mumbles)
[00:12:02.520]What's your dream?
[00:12:04.093]Well, I think the dream of all engineers,
[00:12:07.200]especially, is that we want a product on the market.
[00:12:09.570]We want something that is changing people's lives,
[00:12:12.520]that they don't know that all that work into it,
[00:12:15.640]but that it somehow affects and changes their lives.
[00:12:18.400]And I think that's a wonderful goal
[00:12:20.420]and we all have it, and then we have to obviously
[00:12:22.350]strive for it.
[00:12:24.280]But if I'm honest, my goal is that my graduate students
[00:12:27.660]and my undergraduate students go out and change the world.
[00:12:30.255](upbeat music)
[00:12:33.310]That's it for Faculty 101.
[00:12:35.020]Thanks to Chancellor Green and Dr. Pannier for their help.
[00:12:38.640]This is the final episode for this season of the podcast,
[00:12:41.490]but we'll be back in the fall
[00:12:42.820]with more stories of UNL faculty.
[00:12:45.131](upbeat music)
[00:12:47.750]Faculty 101 is produced by the
[00:12:49.680]University of Nebraska Lincoln.
[00:12:52.027](upbeat music)
[00:12:55.450]I don't, I guess I don't know what free time is
[00:12:57.460]because I have an eight-year-old and a 12-year-old
[00:12:59.300]that are in a lot of activities, so my free time
[00:13:01.420]is I am an Uber driver for children around town.
[00:13:03.730](laughs)

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Innovation in the Lab: Engineering New Ways to Treat Disease

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