Luai R. Khoury

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology | technion · Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering

Despite the significant progress in protein‐based materials, creating a tunable protein‐activated hydrogel lens remains an elusive goal. This study leverages the synergistic relationship between protein structural dynamics and polymer hydrogel engineering to introduce a highly transparent protein–polymer actuator. By incorporating bovine serum albu...

Drug delivery systems (DDSs) and their administration routes play a critical role in the efficacy and safety of drugs. There are several physiological routes for drug delivery, including oral administration, injectables, inhalation, transdermal, intranasal, and transdermal delivery. This article focuses on these administration routes, describes the...

Engineering viscoelastic and biocompatible materials with tailored mechanical and microstructure properties capable of mimicking the biological stiffness (<17 kPa) or serving as bioimplants will bring protein-based hydrogels to the forefront in the biomaterials field. Here, we introduce a method that uses different concentrations of acetic acid (AA...

Smart materials that are capable of memorizing a temporary shape, and morph in response to a stimulus, have the potential to revolutionize medicine and robotics. Here, we introduce an innovative method to program protein hydrogels and to induce shape changes in aqueous solutions at room temperature. We demonstrate our approach using hydrogels made...

Programmable behavior combined with tailored stiffness and tunable biomechanical response are key requirements for developing successful materials. However, these properties are still an elusive goal for protein-based biomaterials. Here, we use protein-polymer interactions to manipulate the stiffness of protein-based hydrogels made from bovine seru...

Programmable behavior combined with tailored stiffness and tunable biomechanical response are key requirements for developing successful materials. However, these properties are still an elusive goal for protein-based biomaterials. Here, we present a new method based on protein-polymer interactions, to manipulate the stiffness of protein-based hydr...

Here, we describe a force-clamp rheometry method to characterize the biomechanical properties of protein-based hydrogels. This method uses an analog proportional-integral-derivative (PID) system to apply controlled-force protocols on cylindrical protein-based hydrogel samples, which are tethered between a linear voice-coil motor and a force transdu...

Negatively charged, uni-sized naked gold (Au) and coated poly (acrylic acid) (PAA)—polyethyleneimine (PEI)-Au (PPAu) nanoparticles (NP)s were incubated with four proteins of different molecular weights: bovine serum albumin (BSA) ~ 67 kDa, cationic trypsin ~ 23.3 kDa, LL-37 peptide ~ 4.5 kDa, and PK(FK)5PK peptide ~ 1.9 kDa. Different interaction k...

The cover shows a custom-made force-clamp hydrogel rheometer (top left) that enables new experiments on low-volume protein-based hydrogel samples (bottom left) attached to the tethering hooks (top right) to study the effect of mechanical (un)folding of protein domains inside hydrogel samples (bottom right).

Here we introduce a new force spectroscopy method to study the mechanics of protein-based hydrogels under controlled force conditions. Our technique relies on exposing cylindrical hydrogels to mechanical force by tethering them between a voice coil motor and a force sensor. Our unique approach uses an analog PID controller to continuously adjust th...

Protein-based hydrogels are unique materials that combine the durability and wetting properties of polymeric hydrogels with the biocompatibility and elasticity of proteins. Additionally, protein hydrogels present a promising system to probe the mechanical unfolding and refolding of proteins in an ensemble approach. Current rheometry methods apply t...

We developed and characterized a platform based on gold (Au) nanoparticles (NPs) coated with polyacrylic acid (PAA) for harvesting positively charged, low molecular weight (LMW) proteins. The particles are synthesized using a layer by layer (LbL) procedure: first the gold NPs are coated with positively-charged polyethyleneimine (PEI) and subsequent...

In our previous study we proposed the use of chemical penetration enhancers for noninvasive detection of fetus abnormalities that can also be utilized for direct fetal drug delivery. In an attempt to further increase the mass transport rate across the amniotic membrane, thus shortening the procedure and improving the applicability of the proposed p...

Transdermal drug delivery offers an attractive alternative to the conventional drug delivery methods of oral administration and injections. However, the stratum corneum serves as a barrier that limits the penetration of substances to the skin. Application of ultrasound (US) irradiation to the skin increases its permeability (sonophoresis) and enabl...