Date/Time Date(s) - 17/04/20262:30 pm - 3:30 pm
Categories
Prof. Rahima Benhabbour
Department of Biomedical Engineering, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina
Abstract:
Long-acting (LA) drug delivery systems (DDSs) can address significant unmet health needs to improve patient compliance and therapeutic outcomes. These DDSs can be designed for treatment, prevention, or as multipurpose prevention technologies.
Preventing HIV infections and unintended pregnancies using multipurpose prevention technologies (MPTs) capable of delivering both LA contraception and HIV prevention is a leading public health priority for women’s health. The Benhabbour lab has been leading the development of three innovative technologies all aiming to address current gaps and unmet needs to accelerate translation of effective MPTs to clinical studies. To that extent, we combine state-of-the-art engineering tools, chemistry, biomaterials, preclinical animal models, and pharmacology models to design and engineer the next generation LA MPTs for the prevention of HIV, other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unintended pregnancy.
Our lab has also focused on addressing critical unmet treatment needs for cancers and regenerative medicine to design novel cell-laden scaffolds for LA delivery of cell therapies.
In this seminar, I will highlight the three large programs that we currently lead on engineering the next generation MPTs and cell-laden scaffolds, which include 1) an ultra-long-acting injectable formulations for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) (NIAID R01AI131430) and first-in-line LA injectable MPT (NIAID R01AI162246); 2) a first-in-line 3D printed intravaginal ring MPT (NIAID R61AI136002; NIAID R01 AI150358); and 3) a novel cell-laden hydrogel scaffold for treatment of glioblastoma (GBM) (NCI 1R01CA286609). This seminar will highlight preclinical results in various animal models (mouse, sheep, macaques) to assess safety, pharmacokinetics, and efficacy of these technologies and discuss their current stage of development and future directions.
Bio. Dr. Benhabbour is an Associate Professor in the UNC-NCSU Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering. Her Lab (https://benhabbour.web.unc.edu/) focuses on harnessing innovative engineering and chemistry tools to develop the next generation drug delivery technologies for disease treatment and prevention. Dr. Benhabbour is inventor in 4 patents and 6 patent applications, and has received multiple awards and honors including the 2025-2026 Yang Family Biomedical Scholars Award, ranking in the top 5% of UNC PIs for NIH funding in 2024-2025, the 2025 CRS Women in Science Award, Outstanding Global Engagement Award Finalist by the NCSU Office of Global Engagement, the 2024 BME Outstanding Faculty Research Award, the Alexander R. Matzuk Award, the CRS Member of the Year Award, the CRS FG Young Investigator Award, the David Sokal Innovation Award, BME Faculty Research Award, Eshelman Institute for Innovation Award and many more. She is also the Founder & Director of Anelleo, Inc. (https://anelleo.com/), a startup company pioneering an innovative 3D printed intravaginal ring platform technology for unmet women’s health indications. Her development of highly translational drug delivery technologies has been highlighted through multiple publications in high-impact scientific journals (4 papers published in Nature Communications, Nature Reviews Bioengineering, Biomaterials, JCR) and with her latest paper surrounding an innovative technology (PCT/US22/35713) which was featured among the Editors’ Highlights pages in Nature Communications and was also nominated for the CDC’s 2024 Charles C. Shepard Science Award. The Shepard Awards recognize excellence in scientific achievement by CDC and ATSDR authors of outstanding scientific papers. Dr. Benhabbour received over $20M in funding from NIH-NIAID & NIH-NCI R01 and R61 mechanisms, the Gates Foundation, Merck, CONRAD, MCI, CDC, USAID, and UNC to advance and translated her technologies to human studies and make significant impact on women’s health globally.