What If Therapies Could Think? Engineering Precision Through Smart Materials
Nitin Joshi, PhD
Assistant Professor of Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School; Director of Basic Science Research, Department of Anesthesiology, Mass General Brigham, USA.
Online via ZOOM
About
Advances in biomaterials and nanomedicine are enabling a new generation of drug delivery systems that adapt to dynamic disease states and improve therapeutic precision. Our work focuses on engineering translatable platforms that integrate disease-responsive release, targeted delivery, and long-acting performance to address major unmet needs in medicine. In this talk, I will discuss how rational material design can overcome key biological barriers, enable precision delivery to specific tissues and cell types, and improve patient safety. I will highlight our recent advances in developing materials that adapt to inflammatory microenvironments, nanoparticle systems for precision delivery of nucleic acids and small molecules, and injectable depots for sustained, localized immunomodulation. These approaches have broad applications across chronic inflammatory diseases, neurodegeneration, regenerative medicine, and transplantation, and demonstrate how biomaterial engineering can translate into safer, more effective therapies with real-world clinical potential.
Bio
Dr Nitin Joshi is an Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School and Director of Basic Science Research in the Department of Anesthesiology at Mass General Brigham. He earned his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and completed his postdoctoral fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Joshi’s laboratory operates at the intersection of chemistry, materials science, biology, and medicine, developing translatable drug delivery technologies to address unmet clinical needs across diverse diseases. His innovations have led to numerous granted and pending patents, most licensed to biotechnology companies, commercialized and advancing through clinical trials.
He is also the co-founder and Scientific Advisory Board Co-Chair of Akita Biosciences, a biotechnology company advancing nasal spray-based prophylactic formulations, developed in his lab, for respiratory infections and allergies. His research has been published in leading journals including Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, Science Advances and PNAS and has been widely featured in global media and scientific outlets.
He is the recipient of multiple honors, including the CMBE Rising Star Award, MIT Technology Review (TR35) Award and the Lockheed Martin Innovation Award. As a dedicated mentor, Dr. Joshi has trained more than 60 students and fellows, fostering the next generation of biomedical scientists.
Hosted by María José Alonso. Nanomedicine and Drug Delivery group, CiMUS.
Certificates of attendance will be provided upon request at cimus.xestion [at] usc.es (cimus[dot]xestion[at]usc[dot]es). Please do not forget to enter your full name and surname when registering online for the lecture.