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On Research...
Outside of making art. I also happen to be a huge biology nerd.
In recent years, I've been interested in methods to cure long-term
diseases. These biology pathways have also been a big source of
inspiration for some sculptures that I made, which translate these
abstract concepts into something physical.
Here are some of the recent projects I've worked on:
1) Research on Osteoporosis
2) Reserach on Precision Delivery for Gene Editing Systems
Osteoporosis Research (2025 Summer)
Osteoporosis is the most common bone disease. My research over the past summer at the Massachusetts General Hospital utilized osteocytes, small bone cells that can detect mechanical signals, to develop cures against osteoporosis. Osteocytes are important because they make up the majority of bone cells and control other bone cells that create and destroy bone. Here, I highlight someof the things I've learned to prep for my internship in this small review article I made.
Osteocyte Mechanobiology
(78 pages, 20363 words)
Abstract: Osteoporosis is the most common bone disease. It affects one in three women and one in five men over 50 worldwide. Bone is living tissue, renewed by osteoblasts, which build new bone, and osteoclasts, which resorb old bone. In healthy bone tissue, the bone formation rate roughly equals the resorption rate. However, when this balance is broken, diseases can arise. Osteoporosis occurs when bone resorption outpaces bone formation, resulting in brittle and fragile bones. Scientists are studying osteocytes, a third cell type that coordinates osteoblasts and osteoclasts to treat osteoporosis. Osteocytes can respond to environmental cues like hormones and mechanical signals, allowing them to sense changes in the body or physical activity and adjust bone remodeling accordingly. Since mechanical signals influence bone health, understanding how osteocytes sense mechanical signals can help scientists develop new osteoporosis treatments (About | International Osteoporosis Foundation, n.d).
Exosome Research (2025 Summer)
What if we could use exosomes, small vesicles derived from cancer cells, as a small delivery system for gene editing therapies for cancer? This research proposal centers around this question.
Tumor-Derived Exosomes as a Drug Delivery System for Personalized CRISPR Cancer Therapy
(18 pages, 4934 words)
Abstract: Conventional cancer therapy relies heavily on chemotherapy, which has significant downsides, such as risks of recurrence of drug-resistant tumor cells and considerable side effects that affect a patient’s quality of life. Additionally, current chemotherapy lacks a high degree of specificity in terms of treatment. Specifically, the reliance on a combination of cytotoxic drugs turns cancer therapy into a statistics game. Various research needs to be conducted to deliver truly personalized cancer therapy for the longevity of patients. Recently, research into gene therapy and nanotechnologies for drug delivery offers new insights into strategies to battle against cancer. This paper focuses on using cancer cell-derived exosomes and extracellular vesicles as a drug delivery system for personalized cancer gene therapy. Cancer cell-derived exosomes have already been shown in vitro and in vivo to show a propensity to be reabsorbed by the mother tumor cells. However, previous research lacks valuable insight into using exosomes as a method to deliver gene therapy for cancer, a cancer therapy that could be personalized through two degrees of specificity: one in terms of drug delivery to target a specific type of cancer tissue cells, and the other in terms of the oncogene to be disrupted/ tumor suppressor cells to be restored in tumor cells. This paper first provides an overview of the use of CRISPR/Cas systems, a popular gene therapy tool, and also the research on nanoparticles and exosomes. This paper then discusses a series of proposed in vitro experiments, which aim to examine the efficacy and accuracy of using cancer cell-derived exosomes as a drug delivery system for CRISPR/Cas systems. This paper then discusses further challenges in the clinical use of personalized cancer gene therapy and research gaps to overcome such challenges.
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