During the time at Duke University, I had been interested in the development of RNA-based therapeutics for cancer, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, and genetic diseases. My approaches were three folds: 1) mRNA-based cell reprogramming (immune and non-immune cells), 2) synthetic RNA molecules to activate/modulate RNA-sensing pattern recognition receptors, 3) RNA aptamers to activate immune stimulatory receptors. Furthermore, I had explored to understand how extracellular DNAs and/or RNAs released from dead/dying cells cause the pathogenesis of various diseases such as cancers, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, and thrombosis, and developing measures to ameliorate the progression of such diseases. To this end, my group for the first time demonstrated that certain cationic polymers could be developed as therapeutic agents to neutralize the ability of extracellular DNAs and RNAs to trigger cancer metastasis and inflammatory/autoimmune diseases such as toxin-induced liver injury, systemic lupus erythematosus, and venous thromboembolism.