Prof. Sangeeta N Bhatia

Professor Bhatia's laboratory conducts research at the intersection of engineering, medicine, and biology to develop novel platforms for understanding, diagnosing and treating human disease. The long-term goals are to improve cellular therapies for liver disease, develop microtechnology tools to systematically study living cells, and design multifunctional nanomaterial systems which assemble and communicate to interrogate and coordinately treat cancer. We have developed technologies for interfacing living cells with synthetic systems, enabling new applications in tissue regeneration, stem cell differentiation, medical diagnostics and drug delivery. One such platform applies microfabrication technologies used in semiconductor manufacturing to organize cells of different types to produce a tissue with emergent properties. These efforts have produced human microlivers which model human drug metabolism, drug-induced liver disease, and interaction with human pathogens, thereby establishing high-throughput models that fully replicate the life cycles of hepatitis C and liver-stage human malaria, and are being used for drug testing, discovery, and tissue engineering applications. We are also involved in a multidisciplinary effort to develop nanomaterials as tools for biological studies and as multifunctional agents for cancer therapies. By bridging the unique electromagnetic properties of nanomaterials with advances in bioconjugate chemistry, photonics, and phage display we aim to develop ‘intelligent' systems for tumor therapy and biomolecular detection. Interest centers around nanoparticles and nanoporous materials that can be designed to perform complex tasks such as home to a tumor, sense changes in cells and tissues, enhance imaging, recruit complementary nanoparticles and signal pathways, and trigger the release of a targeted, therapeutic payload.”

The Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies (LMRT) is under the direction of Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia in the Division of Health Sciences Technology and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. LMRT's three main areas of research are: Hepatic Tissue Engineering, Cell-Based BioMEMS and Nanobiotechnology.