Curriculum Vitae
The holy grail of Regenerative Medicine lies in drawing inspiration from biological processes and creating innovative biomimetic therapeutics. Thus, cell therapy has yielded a number of promising results in the field of bone regeneration, especially under pathologies such as osteoporosis. Mesenchymal Stromal Cells (MSC) direct delivery in vivo, however, leads to low survival and rapid clearance, which has limited successful translation to new clinical therapies.
Through the utilization of granular hydrogel materials (1st panel) and delivery of Extracellular Vesicles (EVs) instead of live cells, we formulate an innovative alternative to cell therapy for bone regeneration in rat calvarial defects. By using tools like expansion microscopy and metabolic labeling (2nd 3rd panel) we are interested in shedding light to cell-EV-material interactions that dictate the therapeutic efficacy of our biomaterials. My work lies between the fields of cellular engineering and biomaterials, in vitro and in vivo assays and soon RNA sequencing and proteomics to create innovative biomaterial therapies for EV delivery.