Visiting Lecturer Series – Dr. Bowen Li

Engineering Nucleic Acids and Lipid Nanoparticles for Precision Medicine

Lecture Takeaways

The main takeaways are as follows:

• RNA medicines can be programmed to help cells produce needed proteins or correct certain disease-causing genetic errors.
• By designing both the RNA and its lipid nanoparticle delivery system, treatments may be directed more precisely to tissues such as the lungs or tumors while reducing effects on healthy tissues.
• Engineered transfer RNAs may one day restore proteins interrupted by premature “stop” signals, potentially enabling one treatment approach to address multiple genetic diseases.

Biography

Bowen Li is a tenured Associate Professor in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto. He is cross-appointed to the Institute of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Chemistry and is an Affiliate Scientist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network. He received his B.Sc. in Pharmaceutical Sciences from China Pharmaceutical University in 2013, graduating summa cum laude and ranked first in his class. He earned his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington in 2019 under Professor Shaoyi Jiang. From 2019 to 2022, he completed postdoctoral training at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT with Professors Daniel Anderson and Robert Langer. He joined the University of Toronto in 2022 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2026.

Li’s research combines molecular bioengineering, biomaterials, and artificial intelligence to develop nucleic acid medicines and nonviral delivery technologies. His group engineers mRNA, tRNA, circular RNA, and CRISPR-based gene editors for applications in immunotherapy, regenerative medicine, vaccines, and rare genetic diseases. The group has developed AI-guided and autonomous platforms for designing lipid nanoparticles tailored to different nucleic acid cargos and target tissues.

Li has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed publications, including papers in Cell, Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Materials, Nature Nanotechnology, and Nature Biomedical Engineering. He is an inventor on 17 patents and invention disclosures and has secured more than $26 million in external research funding as a principal investigator or co-principal investigator since 2022. His honors include a Tier II Canada Research Chair in RNA Vaccines and Therapeutics, the GSK Chair Professorship in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery, the Gairdner Early Career Investigator Award, the Ontario Early Researcher Award, the AAPS Emerging Leader Award, the Oxford-Harrington Rare Disease Scholar Award, and the Terry Fox New Investigator Award.

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