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Biomedical Engineering Research Seminar

Bahareh Behkam

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech

Abstract

Mechanical forces and effects regulate all phenomena in our physical world—disease prevention and
treatment are no exception. Our laboratory focuses on understanding the biophysics of disease
development and devising biophysically-centered preventative/therapeutic approaches. In this seminar,
I will provide an overview of our recent efforts in this space with an emphasis on developing bacteria-
based cancer therapy.
I will share our work in developing a bacteria-based engineered system known as Nanoscale Bacteria-
Enabled Autonomous Delivery System (NanoBEADS) for cancer therapy. Each NanoBEADS agent
comprises an engineered Salmonella Typhimurium bacterium and an ensemble of engineered
polymeric nanoparticle “cargo.” First, I will discuss the scalable biomanufacturing of NanoBEADS. Next,
I will describe our work using synthetic biology to harness biological controllers and develop a
distributed network of NanoBEADS agents that function as an intelligent, reconfigurable, and adaptable
swarm. I will discuss the crucial role of computational modeling in probing the interplay between the
sensitivity of biological controllers and the robustness of emergent behaviors in NanoBEADS swarms in
the context of targeted drug delivery. I will conclude with recent results in overcoming the formidable
physical barriers to drug penetration in primary and metastatic solid tumors using our NanoBEADS 2.0
platform. Autonomous biohybrid drug delivery systems such as NanoBEADS could unlock a powerful
new paradigm in cancer therapy by improving the therapeutic index of chemotherapeutics and
minimizing systemic side effects.

Bio

Prof. Bahareh Behkam obtained her B.Sc. degree from Sharif University of Technology and
her M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie Mellon University, all in Mechanical Engineering. She is
the John R. Jones III Faculty Fellow and professor of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech, where
she directs the MicroN BASE Laboratory. Her current research interests include bio-hybrid microrobotic
systems for biomedical and environmental applications, mechanobiology of pathogen-biomaterial and
pathogen-host cell interactions, and cell migration in multi-cue environments. She received Virginia
Tech’s College of Engineering Outstanding New Assistant Professor Award in 2012, the National
Science Foundation CAREER award in 2015, and was recognized as an Emerging Leader in Biological
Engineering in 2023. Her lab’s research work has been recognized by several awards, including the
2012 Adhesion Society Peeble Award, the 2013 ASME-NEMB Aline Best Paper Award, the 2014
ASME-NEMB Best Poser Award, the 2018 MARSS Best Conference Paper Award, and the 2020
IMECE-NSF Top Experimental Research Award. She is an associate editor for the Journal of Micro-Bio
Robotics and a member of the international advisory board for Small Structures.

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