UCSD - University of California - San Diego

09/29/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/29/2026 10:18

Nanomedicine Pioneer Awarded MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’

Published Date

September 29, 2026

Article Content

Key Takeaways

  • UC San Diego chemical and nano engineering professor Liangfang Zhang has been named a 2026 MacArthur Fellow from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
  • Zhang is recognized for pioneering a new kind of nanomedicine that uses nanoparticles disguised as the body's own cells to treat and prevent cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory disorders.
  • Known as the MacArthur "genius grant," the award provides $800,000 in unrestricted funds over five years.

UC San Diego chemical and nano engineering professor Liangfang Zhang has defined his career by creating cell-mimicking nanoparticles to treat disease. His invention is a kind of cellular disguise. He takes membranes from human cells and uses them to cloak tiny, biodegradable particles about one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Armed with these disguises, the nanosized particles are given some of the biological powers of the cells they mimic.

Red blood cell membranes can camouflage the tiny particles as part of the body, allowing them to circulate longer and deliver drugs where they are needed. Those same particles can also act as "nanosponges" that absorb and remove bacterial toxins. Meanwhile, white blood cell membranes can give the particles the ability to clear out molecules that drive sepsis, attack infection-causing fungi, and even intercept inflammatory signals that help drive rheumatoid arthritis.

For creating this technology - and pioneering its development toward potential treatment and prevention of cancer, infectious diseases and inflammatory disorders - Zhang has been named a 2026 MacArthur Fellow from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Known as the MacArthur "genius grant," the award provides $800,000 in unrestricted funds over five years.

Zhang, who is also the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Chancellor's Endowed Chair in Innovations for Engineering in Medicine, was recognized for "creating novel nanotechnologies for targeted drug delivery, vaccines, and other biomedical applications."

"UC San Diego congratulates Professor Liangfang Zhang on this tremendous, well-deserved honor," said Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla. "Professor Zhang has turned cellular membranes into a platform technology to deliver medicines and combat infectious disease and inflammation, with the ultimate goal of improving lives. His fundamental and translational research collaborations across campus, exceptional teaching and mentorship, and entrepreneurial leadership exemplify the caliber of our world-class faculty."

"This honor means a great deal to me," Zhang said. "It recognizes 16 years of work by my team to take cellular nanoparticle technology from an early discovery to a platform that has influenced the field and may ultimately benefit patients."

The idea behind Zhang's approach is simple, yet ingenious. Instead of designing a new drug to target every disease-causing molecule, he borrows the biological machinery that cells already use to recognize and respond to them.

"A cell membrane is an incredibly complex natural material," Zhang said. "It would be extremely difficult for us to recreate all the details on its surface, with so many proteins, lipids and carbohydrates organized together in precise ways. The beauty of our technology is that we don't have to recreate that complexity from scratch. We can use the membrane itself."

The result is a new kind of medicine that can potentially treat disease without having to rely on conventional drugs such as antibiotics and antifungals. The approach could be less vulnerable to the problem of drug resistance.

"I have had the pleasure of watching Liangfang in action as he makes connections that I think most people would never make between nano engineering, chemistry, biology and human health," said Albert P. Pisano, dean of the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and special adviser to the chancellor. "Liangfang's thought processes are often both unique and elegant. His work is both revolutionary and practical - always with the focus of improving lives."

An engineering shortcut

The insight emerged from a longstanding problem in nanomedicine. Nanoparticles can carry large quantities of medicine despite their tiny size - but once injected into the bloodstream, they encounter the immune system, which is designed to remove things that do not belong.

Researchers have tried to make synthetic particles less conspicuous, including by coating them with materials designed to suppress immune recognition. Zhang's idea was to instead use a more convincing and readily available disguise: a cell's actual surface.

His laboratory began with red blood cells. The researchers collected their membranes and wrapped them around nanoparticles while preserving the proteins, lipids and carbohydrates that naturally cover the cell surface. In a landmark paper published in 2011 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team showed that the nanoparticles could circulate in the bloodstream for up to two days. This was far longer than many conventional nanoparticles.

Zhang has often called his approach an engineering shortcut. "We don't need to spend years figuring out how to reproduce every detail at the protein level," he said. "We can just take the entire cell membrane, coat it onto a nanoparticle surface, and make the nanoparticle look like a red blood cell."

The disguise offered more than extended circulation. Red blood cells are natural targets for bacterial toxins that kill cells by punching holes in their membranes. By disguising nanoparticles as these cells, toxins mistook them for the real thing. Zhang's team called them "nanosponges" for their ability to soak up the toxins and divert them away from actual cells.

The approach showed promise against toxins produced by bacteria, including MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). By removing the toxins, the nanosponges helped weaken infections caused by MRSA. And because the approach does not depend on antibiotics, it could potentially help address antibiotic-resistant infections.

Borrowing from different cells

Following the success of the red blood cell nanosponges, Zhang began borrowing from other cells, including two types of white blood cells known as macrophages and neutrophils.

His lab developed macrophage-coated nanosponges to capture toxins and inflammatory molecules involved in sepsis, which is an uncontrolled immune response - triggered by a bacterial infection - that can damage organs. Because macrophage membranes contain receptors for a broad spectrum of sepsis-causing molecules, the macrophage nanosponges could serve as universal traps for them. It's more effective than targeting a single type of disease-causing molecule, Zhang explained.

That same principle led to neutrophil-coated nanosponges as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. Neutrophils are immune cells that rush to sites of inflammation, where they can fuel a chain reaction that causes further inflammation and tissue damage. Zhang's lab demonstrated that neutrophil nanosponges acted as decoys. They intercepted inflammation-causing molecules before they could perpetuate the inflammatory cycle.

More recently, Zhang's lab extended the concept to fighting drug-resistant fungal infections caused by Candida albicans, which is responsible for common yeast infections and even deadly bloodstream infections. Since macrophages naturally recognize Candida, researchers used their cell membranes to create nanoparticles that could go after the fungal cells. In experiments, the particles attached to Candida cells, physically damaged them and helped stimulate the body's immune defenses.

Across these projects, a recurring theme emerges: use biology's existing recognition systems rather than design a new drug for every pathogen.

"We've shown many examples of mimicking natural interactions in the body to create more effective therapies," Zhang said.

Cell-mimicking nanoparticles have also shown promise for delivering drugs to targeted sites in the body. Previously, Zhang and his team created nanoparticles disguised as platelets, which are the tiny cells in blood that bind to damaged blood vessels to stop bleeding. Platelets also preferentially bind to certain pathogens such as MRSA bacteria. When loaded with medicines, the platelet-coated nanoparticles delivered their cargo straight to damaged arteries and bacterial infections and healed them using just a fraction of the typical dose. By focusing treatment just to the areas where they are needed, and not spreading it throughout the rest of the body, the nanoparticles can increase the therapeutic efficacy of drugs and minimize side effects, Zhang explained.

Translating discoveries into benefits for society

There is a personal dimension to Zhang's drive to turn laboratory ideas into practical technologies. When he joined UC San Diego in 2008, his laboratory was housed in the Moores Cancer Center. Every day, he would see dozens of cancer patients pass through the building.

"That environment provided a natural intersection between engineering and medicine," Zhang said. "Seeing so many people suffering, I couldn't help but think about what I could do to improve medicine. As a scientist, I felt a responsibility to do something that could make a difference."

As an undergraduate studying chemical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, Zhang helped develop an unusually tough plastic. He could have commercialized it and started a factory. Instead, he left to pursue a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, then became a postdoctoral researcher at MIT.

Even though Zhang didn't end up running a plastics factory, he co-founded biotech startups. One of them, San Diego-based Cellics Therapeutics, is working to translate the red blood cell and macrophage nanosponges toward clinical studies and treatments for bacterial infections, autoimmune diseases and inflammatory diseases. "We're also looking to use the cellular nanoparticles to neutralize a wide variety of pathogens, including bacterial toxins and viruses," Zhang said.

That same commitment to translation shapes his work as chair of the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, where he has worked tirelessly to bridge the chemical engineering and nano engineering majors.

Traditionally, the two have occupied somewhat different territories, Zhang explained. Nano engineering focuses on innovative nanoscience and technologies operating at very small scales. Meanwhile, chemical engineering focuses more heavily on large-scale production, manufacturing and the processes required to turn materials into products.

But Zhang saw an opportunity to connect the two. That effort was recognized with a $21 million gift to the department in 2024 from San Diego-based business leader and philanthropist Aiiso Yufeng Li (Jeff) and his family.

"When we restructured the department, we used the slogan, 'Scalable Innovation.' I love that phrase because nanotechnology is more about innovation, and chemical engineering is focused on turning innovation into something that can be scaled up and used in the real world. Bringing those two strengths together is part of what makes our curricula unique."

As a result, undergraduate students can study more seamlessly between the two disciplines. They can learn both nanoscale science and how discoveries can be manufactured at scale - much like Zhang did in his own training.

A legacy of innovation

Zhang has been honored with various prestigious awards throughout his career. He was named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) in 2020, and also elected to both the Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2018 and the Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2015. He was also recognized as one of Popular Science's "Brilliant 10" in 2016 and MIT Technology Review's top 35 young innovators of 2013. In addition, he was repeatedly named among the Clarivate listing of Most Highly Cited Researchers in the World.

"In the past 10 years, more than 10,000 papers have been published on cell membrane coating technology from hundreds of laboratories," Zhang said. "That means laboratories around the world are using our technology to advance their own research. The impact goes beyond my own lab; it's reaching many other researchers we may never even meet."

Previous recipients of the MacArthur fellowship currently on the UC San Diego faculty are: computer science and engineering professor Stefan Savage; Dean of the Division of Social Sciences Carol Padden; anthropology professor Guillermo Algaze; and philosophy professor Nancy Cartwright. In addition, a number of emeritus faculty also have received the award in the past.

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