Cong Lab - Research Focus

Research Overview

The Uro-Bionic Therapeutics Lab engineers bioinspired micro/nanoscale machines and smart drug-delivery systems that carry therapy precisely to where disease lives. By combining microrobotics, peptide nanomedicine, and immunotherapy, we aim to make cancer treatment more targeted, less invasive, and more durable — with a primary focus on bladder and other urologic cancers.

Tumor models: bladder cancer · kidney cancer · multiple myeloma · melanoma · breast cancer · orthotopic PDX

Actuation & design: magnetic steering · biohybrid · self-propelled · size-transformable

Modalities: chemo · photo/sonodynamic · oncolytic virus · immunotherapy · imaging

🤖 Micro/Nano-Robotic Therapeutics

Tiny machines that actively swim, steer, and deliver drugs to hard-to-reach tumors.

Conventional drug carriers drift passively through the body. Our microrobots move actively and on-demand — magnetically steered or self-propelled — so therapy accumulates at the tumor instead of healthy tissue. We build them from cells, herbs, and biohybrid materials, each engineered for a specific disease.

Cell robots for bladder cancer: Magnetically-powered Janus cell robots deliver oncolytic adenovirus for active, targeted virotherapy. (Adv. Mater. 2022; Mater. Today Chem. 2023)
Immunogenic macrophage microrobots: Magnetically-driven macrophage robots for targeted multimodal cancer therapy that also engages the immune system. (Small 2023)
Herb-derived microrobots: Robots built from Spora Lygodii (traditional Chinese medicine) carry doxorubicin under magnetic guidance to bladder tumors. (Drug Des. Devel. Ther. 2024)
Biohybrid & fuel-free robots: OMV-, bacteria-, sperm-, and yeast-based microswimmers with MOF "exoskeletons" for drug delivery in harsh biological environments. (ACS AMI 2021; Mater. Today Chem. 2022)
Droplet robots for urology: Multifunctional magnetic droplet robots spanning drug delivery to kidney-stone retrieval. (Micromachines 2026)

🧬 Peptide-Based Drug Delivery Systems

Nanoparticles that change size and shape inside the body to reach deep into tumors.

A nanoparticle big enough to circulate safely is often too big to penetrate a tumor. We design size/surface charge/morphology-transformable peptide nanosystems that start large in the bloodstream, then shrink on demand at the tumor to drive deep tissue penetration — and, in some designs, directly shut down cancer-driving signals.

Signal-arresting peptide nanoparticles: Transformable peptide nanoparticles that arrest HER2 signaling and kill cancer cells in vivo. (Nature Nanotechnology 2020)
Deep-penetrating transformable NPs: Hyaluronan-stacked, size-transformable peptide nanoparticles for improved transcellular tumor penetration and photo-chemo combination therapy. (ACS Nano 2020)
Combination-therapy carriers: Size-transformable systems for pulmonary chemo-sonodynamic therapy with enhanced tumor accumulation and penetration. (J. Control. Release 2022)
Image-guided phototherapy: Scalable multifunctional nanoparticles for bimodal image-guided phototherapy of bladder cancer. (Nano-Micro Lett. 2025)

🛡️Cancer Immunotherapy & Delivery

Turning the body's own immune system against tumors — and delivering it precisely.

Beyond killing tumor cells directly, we design platforms that activate anti-tumor immunity and deliver immunotherapeutics where they act best, with a translational eye toward BCG-unresponsive bladder cancer.

Peptide-nucleic-acid nanovaccines: Programmable PNA-based nanovaccines that activate anticancer immune responses. (Small 2025)
Bacterial-vesicle chemo-immunotherapy: OMV-encapsulated fusion peptide (Polybia-Mastoparan I) as a nanoplatform for bladder-cancer chemo-immunotherapy. (Front. Immunol. 2023)
AI-designed peptide-drug conjugates: Personalized, neoantigen-based peptide-drug conjugates for precision immunotherapy. (in progress)

30+ papers · Nature Nanotech · Adv. Mater. · ACS Nano

Interested in microrobotics, nanomedicine, or cancer immunotherapy? Join the lab →

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