November 11, 2014

Dr. James Moon has been selected to receive the 2014 New Investigator Grant in Pharmaceutics and the Pharmaceutical Technologies sponsored by the American Association of Pharmaceutical Sciences (AAPS) for his contribution to the field of pharmaceutical sciences.

The New Investigator Grant in Pharmaceutics and the Pharmaceutical Technologies Award was presented at the 2014 AAPS Annual Meeting at Exposition held in San Diego, CA, from November 2-6, 2014.

Dr. Moon is the John Gideon Searle Assistant Professor at the U-M College of Pharmacy, as well as Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the U-M College of Engineering.

This award is given in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the field of drug delivery by developing new nanoparticle systems that can significantly improve immune functions. His interdisciplinary research program utilizes nanotechnology, biomaterials, and cellular engineering to develop innovative strategies to enhance immune functions, with the ultimate goal of improving vaccines and immunotherapies against infectious pathogens and cancer.

His research team is currently developing new nanotechnology-based drug delivery platforms for enhancing immune functions. Pre-clinical studies performed by his team have indicated that vaccines formulated into nanoparticles are dramatically better than conventional vaccines currently used in clinics. Vedantra Pharmaceuticals, a new start-up biotech company in Cambridge, MA, plans to test these vaccine nanoparticles for immunization against malaria sporozoites in near future. If successful, this research may lead to a breakthrough in vaccine technology, with wide potential applications ranging from HIV vaccines to cancer prevention and treatment. Dr. Moon’s research has been published in Nature Materials, Nature Medicine, PNAS, and Science Translational Medicine, and he is the recipient of the NIH/NIAID Research Scholar Development Award, the Young Investigator Award from the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society, and the Harvard Wyss Institute Award for Translational Research from IEEE-EMBS.

“It's a great honor to receive this new investigator award from AAPS. This award will help us delve into designing new vaccine delivery platforms for vaccination against infectious pathogens, including HIV,” states Dr. Moon.

Congratulations to Dr. Moon on this outstanding accomplishment!

Read more from AAPS.

Learn more: Dr. James Moon Laboratory Page