Dr. Natalie Artzi

Biomaterials science represents the next frontier in medical therapeutics. Innovations in materials design and formulation have helped create interventions and composite devices previously unimaginable with materials whose structure and function evolve with time. Yet, materials development has outstripped our ability to explain why, when and how these materials work -- especially for dynamic erodible materials that are specifically designed to fade away.

Increasingly, materials are being intelligently designed to have specific biological effects in specific medical scenarios. Yet, there is still limited ability to follow material fate and material impact over time. This is especially the case for erodible materials with tunable body elimination rates after implantation and after performing desired function

Erosive materials are dynamic; they change shape, morphology and structure in the same time frame as they exert their desired effects. This dynamism establishes a number of critical challenges as to how these materials are considered - making it difficult to predict in vivo effects, and requiring a new perspective to define tissue and cellular responses to these materials.

Artzi is studying how tissue-material interactions are modulated by the dynamics of erodible materials that change with time within microenvironments whose physical and biochemical properties vary over similar time scales. Understanding how tissues respond to materials can be used to create strategies for designing materials with desired properties to deliver factors secreted by cells or drugs to induce healing.

Research focuses on the synthesis, characterization and optimization of erodible materials for medical applications. Understanding the properties of such dynamic materials in the context of their in vivo environment requires multidisciplinary approach and new instrumental tools. Artzi uses rational synthesis of polymer based materials and imaging techniques along with physicochemical and pathological characterization of materials and tissues to directly correlate material structural and physical properties to therapeutic gain. Experimental techniques and methodologies that are being developed as a part of hwe research endeavor are generally applicable to any material system where interplay between structure, properties, and performance becomes significant.