Catherine Fromen

Catherine A. Fromen, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, University of Delaware
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Fromen Research Group

Abstract:  Breathe it in: Engineering Approaches to Realize Inhalable Pulmonary Vaccines
While respiratory diseases globally number among the top causes of mortality, the field of pulmonary drug delivery has lagged behind other routes of administration in the application of novel therapeutic approaches, despite offering tremendous potential to locally treat airway conditions. Most current inhalers are employed in the treatment of asthma and have yet to effectively address many significant respiratory disorders. As evident from the dearth of inhalable COVID-19 vaccines or therapeutics, a significant need remains to expand inhaled drug delivery beyond the limited number of current therapeutics. Thus, the overall goal of the Fromen lab is to develop personalized aerosol immunomodulatory therapeutics for patients with a wide range of airway conditions, applying concepts of chemical engineering principles, immune engineering approaches, and additive manufacturing. In this talk, I will discuss recent work from our lab in two areas. In the first area, I will discuss our efforts to create and characterize nanoparticle vaccine therapeutics that can efficiently direct airway innate immune responses. We have explored a range of new particle chemistries, including polymeric and metal organic framework (MOF) platforms, and have evaluated how they impact pulmonary macrophage longevity and phenotype. Interestingly, we find that the lifespan of macrophages, innate immune cells that protect the deepest regions of the lung, are highly regulated by phagocytosis of particles through anti-apoptotic and non-inflammatory mechanisms. We believe this offers a unique opportunity to engineer particle therapeutics to regulate cell viability. In the second area, I will discuss our efforts to design 3D-printed, patient specific in vitro lung deposition tools that have enabled us to test personalized aerosol delivery to targeted locations in the lung. These efforts will advance aerosol design rules to inform personalized inhaled particulate formulations, with potential future applications for novel treatments for COVID-19, cancer, inflammation, vaccination, and allergy.

Biography:
Catherine Fromen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2014 (with Joseph DeSimone) and performed postdoctoral studies at the University of Michigan as a University of Michigan’s President’s Postdoctoral Fellow (with Omolola Eniola-Adefeso). She joined the University of Delaware in 2017, where her research group focuses on applying chemical engineering principles to pulmonary drug delivery. Major research efforts in the group involve designing therapeutic pulmonary aerosols for immune engineering and creating 3D-printed lung replicas to advance in vitro deposition testing. Dr. Fromen has authored over 35 manuscripts and patents and her team’s work has been recognized with recent awards, including receiving the AIChE’s 35 Under 35 Award in 2020 and an NIH Early Stage Investigator (ESI) Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) (R35) in 2021.