People: Natalie Artzi

Bio

Natalie Artzi is an Associate Professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She is a principal Research Scientist at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT, and is an Associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Leveraging material science, chemistry, imaging and biology, Dr. Artzi’s group is dedicated to designing smart material platforms and medical devices to improve human health. Dr. Artzi pioneered basic understanding of tissue:biomaterial interactions and concepts learned have changed the way we view materials. Materials and devices are now being “personalized” by considering specific tissue microenvironments that are altered in the face of disease. Her multidisciplinary team works on developing materials for diagnosis and therapy, and exploit the toolkit available for material scientists to create multifaceted medical devices. Dr. Artzi’s graduate thesis work at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion)—under the direction of Prof. Moshe Narkis—defined how polymer:nano-filler interactions dictate structure:function relationships. Her postdoctoral training with Prof. Elazer Edelman at MIT focused on studying tissue:biomaterial interactions to rationally design materials with optimal therapeutic outcome. She served as part of the scientific advisory board of Science Translational Medicine, and as a dedicated mentor she initiated student exchange program between Ort Braude College in Israel and MIT that provides undergraduate students with the opportunity to perform a year of internship under her supervision.

Selected Awards/Societies

• Senior Visiting Scholar, Fudan University, China 2016-2017
• Nano-Micro Letters Researcher Award, Nano-Micro Letters 2016
• Associate Member, Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT 2015-Present
• STAR Award- Society for Biomaterials 2010
• STAR Award- honorable mention, Society for Biomaterials 2010

Research Interests

Tissue-responsive biomaterials, drug-delivery devices, nano-theranostics for cancer therapy and cardiovascular diseases, nanocomposite materials for orthopedics.

Our laboratory integrates material science, chemistry, imaging and biology in the design of smart materials and medical devices to improve human health. The complex microenvironment in vivo at different tissue sites with diverse cell types and under different pathological conditions may alter material properties and in turn, affect its in vivo performance. It is crucial, therefore, to carefully study tissue microenvironment and optimize materials in light of the specific conditions in which they will have to perform their function. We design materials for systemic and local delivery of therapeutics, ranging from small molecules, amino acids, and nucleotides to antibodies. These materials serve both as a tool to study biological mechanisms, disease etiology and progression, and as model systems to investigate the effect of materials physicochemical properties and administration-mode on therapeutic outcomes. We utilize nanodevices with the ability to monitor real-time drug action to allow for the development of diagnostic systems with targeted therapeutics, finding applications in cardiovascular, cancer therapy and orthopedics.