Leeper Receives Falk Award

Dr. Nicholas Leeper is the recipient of the 2020 Falk Medical Research Trust Transformational Award. The $1M in funding from Health Resources in Action will fund Leeper's project "Precision Nanotherapies for Cardiovascular Disease" through November 2022.

"The award is designed to catalyze bench-to-bedside translation of biomedical discoveries," said Leeper. "The Leeper Lab was awarded this grant to develop new ‘Trojan horse’ nanoparticles that ‘home’ to diseased blood vessels. This project will test whether these ‘precision therapies’ can reactivate immune surveillance pathways and begin to reverse atherosclerotic plaque accumulation."

Leeper, a professor in the Division of Vascular Surgery, says the ultimate goal is to develop a new treatment for heart attack and stroke.

Leeper et al published a paper in Nature Nanotechnology earlier this year showing that drug-coated nanoparticles limit the development of atherosclerosis in mice, without side effects.