ChE 2025 Fall Seminar Series

Details

Speaker: Dr. Nathalie Pinkerton
NYU Tandon School of Engineering

Title: Engineering and manufacturing nanoparticles to treat cancer pain

Abstract:
Nanomedicine, the application of nanomaterials to the field of medicine, holds the potential to significantly improve human health, ranging from more effective cancer treatments to novel medical imaging contrast agents for improved diagnoses. Nanomedicines have engineered properties that enable them to behave differently in vivo compared to small molecule drugs. Because of their nanometer length scale, nanomedicines can interact with cells and tissues in a unique fashion.

The Pinkerton Research Group creates highly engineered nanomaterials using novel scalable manufacturing methods to address cancer, pain and inflammation. We use tools from chemistry, nanotechnology, and chemical engineering to build and discover structure-property relationships in new materials designed to interact specifically with the tumor microenvironment, including immune cells and sensory neurons. Our nanoparticles are designed for precise interactions by (1) building in spatiotemporal control of drug release through two-photon near-infrared light response capabilities, (2) optimizing nanoparticle physicochemical properties for selective cellular uptake, and (3) delivering a wide range of therapeutic cargos from small molecules to biologics. In this presentation, I will discuss my group’s advances in these areas with an emphasis on our modular nanoparticle assembly techniques, flash nanoprecipitation and sequential nanoprecipitation, and our work developing nanoparticle-based therapeutics for the treatment of oral cancer pain.

Bio:
Dr. Nathalie Pinkerton joined the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NYU Tandon School of Engineering as an assistant professor in 2020. She is a member of the NYU Pain Research Center and serves on the scientific advisory board of Endosome Therapeutics. Dr. Pinkerton earned her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from MIT. She went on to receive her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University, where she worked under the guidance of Dr. Robert K. Prud’homme developing new designs and processing methods for polymeric drug delivery vehicles and imaging agents. While at Princeton, Dr. Pinkerton was a Francis Upton Fellow and received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. She then pursued postdoctoral training at L’Institut des Technologies Avancées en sciences du Vivant (ITAV), an interdisciplinary CNRS research institute in Toulouse, France, where she worked at the interface of organic chemistry, nanotechnology and cancer biology with Dr. Stefan Chassaing and Dr. Bernard Ducommun. While at ITAV, she received a Recherche et Innovation Thérapeutique en Cancérologie (RITC) foundation fellowship. In 2016, she was recruited to Pfizer’s Early Discovery Oncology Research Unit to help establish their new cancer nanomedicine research team. As a senior scientist and research project leader, she led two cross-functional teams focused on developing nanoparticle-based cancer therapies. While at Pfizer, Nathalie was a recipient of the Pfizer W.E. Upjohn Prize in 2017, 2018 and 2019. At NYU Tandon, Nathalie leads an interdisciplinary research lab focused on the conception, development, and translation of highly engineered nanomaterials for the detection and treatment of disease with a focus on cancer and pain. Her group has three primary areas of interest: developing NIR light-responsive chemistries and nanoparticles, designing nanoparticles for non-addictive pain treatment, and engineering continuous flow manufacturing processes for scalable and tunable particle synthesis for biomedical applications. Nathalie is the recent recipient of the NYU Goddard Junior Faculty Fellowship Award, the Wechsler Faculty Excellence Award, and the 2025 Northeast Bioengineering Conference Emerging Investigator Award. Her lab is grateful for funding support from the NIH and DoD.