Engineering Commons^™

Filomicelle Functionalization And Stability Studies With Applications For Malaria Treatments, Megan Haoyun Yang

Masters Theses

Malaria is an infectious disease caused by the parasite Plasmodium that is transmitted by mosquitoes. It is estimated that malaria causes 1.1 million deaths per year globally. While anti-malarial drugs have been effective in treating infected individuals, new methodologies are needed. Treatments may benefit from approaches that encapsulate drugs in vehicles allowing for more effective delivery. To this end, the use of targeted drug delivery vehicles called filomicelles to treat malaria is proposed.

Certain amphiphilic diblock copolymers self-assemble into filomicelles (long and stable cylindrical micelles), which are capable of carrying hydrophobic drugs in the bodies of rodents. It is shown …

Application Of Synthetic Biology For Increasing Anaerobic Biodiesel Production In Escherichia Coli, Michael Christopher Wierzbicki

Masters Theses

The ever-increasing demand for transportation biofuels requires new and novel approaches to solve the complexities associated with efficient biofuel production. Ethanol, the most common biofuel, has physical limitation associated with difficulty of separations and issues with water contamination and as such is not a long-term transportation fuel solution. (Lou & Singh, 2010; Wheals, Basso, Alves, & Amorim, 1999) Biodiesel is seen as a possible alternative to ethanol due to its hydrophobicity and also has comparable energy density and cetane number to its petroleum derived counterpart. (Kalscheuer, Stölting, & Steinbüchel, 2006) Because of feedstock limitations, biodiesel produced from vegetable oils is …