Winner Profile: Sophia Bird

Sophia Bird
Trainee Paper Award Profile

Sophia Bird

2026 Award Recipient

University of Lethbridge

“High-Resolution Characterization of Protein-Conjugated, mRNA-Loaded Lipid Nanoparticles by Analytical Ultracentrifugation”

Sophia Bird worked on a challenging project using analytical ultracentrifugation to characterize the composition of liquid therapeutics composed of protein-functionalized lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) loaded with mRNA cargo. As Sophia has shown in her paper published in Adv Functional Matter “High-Resolution Characterization of Protein-Conjugated, mRNA-Loaded Lipid Nanoparticles by Analytical Ultracentrifugation”, analytical ultracentrifugatoin in combination with D2O density matching, as well as a new computer program in UltraScan, allows, for the first time, lipid nanoparticle distributions based on molar mass, density, and hydrodynamic radius to be obtained using UV/visible detection at wavelengths largely unaffected by light scattering.  Link to paper – https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adfm.202523042