For more than two decades, I have been actively engaged in basic and translational cancer and nanomedicine research and teaching. As a clinical pathologist, I have extensive advanced training in multiple overlapping medical fields applicable to my research interests. These include transfusion medicine & blood banking, hematology & hematopathology, clinical immunology & serology, clinical microbiology, molecular pathology & genetics, and nanomedicine. I am particularly specialized in clinical chemistry, including biomarker and derivative therapeutic development.

The strongly integrated pharmacology and cancer research environment within the University of Louisville Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Hepatobiology & Toxicology COBRE, and the Brown Cancer Center (BCC) is extraordinary. I am a member of the BCC experimental therapeutics program and serve on the BCC Clinical & Scientific Review Committee, responsible for approving implementation of clinical trials evaluating innovative therapeutics. While serving as a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis, I independently envisioned, implemented and directed the first ever extracellular vesicle (EV)-based nanomedicine research program at the University. Building on this platform, our lab has successfully pioneered powerful and efficient EV isolation, modification and tracking technologies, including the development of liposomal EV mimetics and EV theranostics. These provided the first evidence that melanoma EVs promote angiogenesis and license recruitment of melanoma cells to lymph nodes thus revealing an entirely new mechanism of cancer metastasis. My research contributions have extended to HIV-1 as well given the overlap between EV and HIV cellular production pathways and biophysical structure. We invented a new class of virucidal anti-HIV nanoparticle that disrupts the HIV lipid envelope. The mechanism of action is unique in that by targeting envelope lipids, there is little chance for the virus to develop mutational resistance. More recently, we developed antagomiric EV-like mimetic liposomes to treat malaria.