Currently located in QUT Centre for Immunology and Infection Control, Fred (Po-Chun) Chou is a Griffith University PhD candidate under the primary supervision of Dr. Matthew Zunk and associate supervision of Professor Kevin Morris, Dr. Adi Idres, Dr. Wenqing Gao, and A. Professor Jason Peart. Fred completed his Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry in 2020 at Monash University and his Masters of Pharmaceutical Industry Practices under the supervision of Dr. Harendra Parekh and Dr. Karnaker Tupally. During his master’s degree studies he developed Poloxamer-based nanoparticle for delivery of siRNA/small molecule drugs. Fred also received Dean’s Commendation reward twice issued by University of Queensland in 2022.
Project Title: Development of T-cell targeted Anti-HIV CAR-T RNA Packaged Exosomes
RNA-based therapeutic is a relatively new field that has garner a lot of interest in recent years due to the approval of Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines. Delivery of RNA-based therapeutics has remained to be one of the most challenging aspects when it comes to RNA drug development. The major challenges that come with delivering RNA drugs includes: risk of eliciting a detrimental immune response when administered, avoiding unwanted clearance by off target tissues, delivery to the correct tissue with desired cell type, must be taken up by endocytosis while achieve endosomal escape. Natural RNA molecules are also rapidly degraded by RNase within serum conditions with a reported half-life of several minutes to an hour. Several strategies have been developed to address these issues such as chemical modification, nanoparticle delivery, and viral-vector delivery.
Exosome based RNA delivery platform is a relatively new field with limited exploration and no effective T-cell targeting strategies. This project aims to address this gap of knowledge through determining whether T-cell specific exosomes can be engineered and delivered in vitro using 5’UTR region of human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) and various previously established exosome engineering strategies. It was hypothesised that through optimisation and configuration of EXOtic system developed by Kojima et al. We can engineer monocyte cell targeting EVs. This engineered approach holds promise in future exosomal delivery applications where T-targeting is required.