People: Sangeeta N. Bhatia

Bio

Sangeeta is a biomedical researcher, MIT professor, and biotech entrepreneur who works to adapt technologies developed in the computer industry for medical innovation. Trained as both a physician and engineer at Harvard, MIT, and Brown University, Bhatia leverages ‘tiny technologies’ of miniaturization to yield inventions such as human microlivers that model human drug metabolism and liver disease, as well as responsive nanoparticles and nanoporous materials that can be engineered to diagnose, study, and treat a variety of diseases, including cancer. She and her trainees have launched multiple biotechnology companies to improve human health. As a prolific inventor and passionate advocate for diversity in science and engineering, Bhatia has received many honors including the Lemelson-MIT Prize, known as the ‘Oscar for inventors,’ and the Heinz Medal for groundbreaking inventions and advocacy for women in STEM fields. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, the Director of the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and Brown University’s Board of Trustees.

Research Interests

The Bhatia Laboratory engineers micro and nanotechnologies, also called “tiny technologies,” to address complex challenges in human health ranging from cancer to liver disease and acquired infections. Operating at the interface of living and synthetic systems, the Bhatia group uses these miniaturization tools to improve areas of medicine including diagnostics, drug delivery, tissue regeneration, and disease modeling.

In cancer, Bhatia’s multidisciplinary team develops tools for use in diagnostics and detection, and in precision therapeutics to specifically target tumors. Nanosensors designed by the Bhatia team can detect and profile very early-stage tumors, and can be analyzed via a simple urine test. The same technology may also yield insights into a tumor’s response to certain therapies.

The Bhatia Lab has also engineered human liver tissues to understand human-specific drug toxicity, liver regeneration, circadian rhythms and more recently viral and non-viral delivery of nanoparticles and nucleic acids. These minimal human microlivers can be transplanted, vascularized, and survive and thrive in vivo. They are used to study human liver pathophysiology, in addition to therapeutic investigations seeking to leverage hepatocytes for their curative potential for both heritable and acquired diseases of the liver.

Bhatia also brings her collection of tiny tools to bear on the study of, and intervention in infectious disease. This effort is focused on liver and lung microenvironments so as to leverage her expertise in microscale modeling of host-pathogen interactions and engineering responsive nanosystems for detection and therapy. For example, Bhatia has studied liver stages of malaria parasites Plasmodium falciparum and vivax and hepatotropic viruses hepatitis B and C, producing unique in vitro models that serve to inform drug and vaccine development. In the lung, Bhatia’s team seeks to understand how the infected lung microenvironment can be leveraged to interact with nanomaterials that (1) rapidly diagnose respiratory infections via urine and breath and (2) selectively activate potent antimicrobials. Collectively, these insights are applied to combat the threat of emerging antimicrobial resistance.

Selected Awards/Societies

• DSc (Medicine) honoris causa, University of London- Institute Cancer Research, 2019
• Othmer Gold Medal, Science History Institute (Chemical Heritage Foundation), 2019
• Honorary Doctorate, Utrecht University, the Netherlands
• National Academy of Sciences, 2017
• National Academy of Inventors, 2016
• Heinz Award, 2015
• National Academy of Engineering, 2015
• Lemelson-MIT Prize, 2014
• Massachusetts Academy of Sciences
• Biomedical Engineering Society
• American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering
• American Society for Clinical Investigation
• David and Lucile Packard Fellowship
• NSF Career Award
• C. Fung Young Investigator Award of the American College of Clinical Pharmacology
• Brown Engineering Alumni Medal
• Merkin Fellow, Broad Institute
• Harvard Medical School Diversity Award
• Harvard-MIT Thomas McMahon Mentoring Award