New Member – Alejandro Gutierrez

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New Member – Alejandro Gutierrez

The BSEL would like to welcome Alejandro De Janon Gutierrez to the lab!

 

Alejandro received his degree of chemical engineer at the National Technological University  (UTN), Buenos Aires, Argentina. During his final year of study and after obtaining his degree, he worked in process risk management consulting for oil, chemical, food and pharmaceutical companies. After being awarded with a Fulbright Scholarship, Alejandro continued his studies and obtained his Master in Biotechnology at Texas A&M. During his masters he worked on bioprocessing and downstream purification of proteins. His research on this field led him to an internship at Merck & Co. where he gained experience on monoclonal antibodies manufacturing.

 

After completing his masters, Alejandro came to Georgia Tech to pursue his PhD in Bioengineering. His research is focused on developing a 3D in vitro leukemia model, analyzing cancer metabolism to culture leukemic cells.

 

 

Our Paper was selected by ACS as the Editors’ Choice

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Our Paper was selected by ACS as the Editors’ Choice

The BSEL’s most recent paper has received the great honor of being chosen as the American Chemical Society’s Editors’ Choice! The article entitled “Linking Engineered Gene Circuit Kinetic Modeling to Cellulose Biosynthesis Prediction in Escherichia coli: Toward Bioprocessing of Microbial Cell Factories” was featured in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research in which we present a rational modeling approach linking the designed engineered gene circuit to bioprocess kinetics, whereby the engineered gene circuit model informs the formulation of product biosynthesis and is coupled to microbial growth. This kinetic model is a practical and complementary approach to systems and synthetic biology for the robust operation of microbial cell factory systems and their bioprocess applications. Read more here

NSF I-Corps Team 1656 BioProcess Optimizer

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NSF I-Corps Team 1656 BioProcess Optimizer

Over the course of 7 weeks this summer, BSEL members Dr. Ana Quiroga and Esther Chen along with their business mentor, Nakia Melecio, from Georgia Tech’s ATDC traveled all around the US and Switzerland to visit biotech hubs as a part of the national NSF I-Corps (D.C. node). The aim of this intense program is to get academic researchers out of their comfort zone and into the field to evaluate the commercial potential of their technology. Our efforts paid off and we completed 212 (!) interviews and identified the following customer segments: manufacturing of biomolecules for human therapeutics, viruses for gene therapies, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) for tissue regeneration and immunomodulation, T cells for CAR-T therapies, animal vaccines, and clean meat production. Our team interviewed a wide variety of professionals, from machine learning experts, to upstream process engineers, to members of the CDC, and clinicians. From these numerous discussions, we learned about the pains each industry faces and how our technology could potentially fill the gap. Moving forward, we will continue to learn about our customer segment and continue to work towards bringing our technology to the market.

We would like to thank all of those who supported us throughout the journey, including friends, family, BSEL members, and especially Drs. Mantalaris and Panoskaltsis for allowing us to seize this opportunity and make the most of this incredible experience.

Publication Announcement – CORDIS

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Publication Announcement – CORDIS

We are pleased to announce that our lab’s BioBlood project has been selected for publication in the “Results in Brief” section of the European Commission’s CORDIS (Community Research and Development Information Service). The article entitled “Development of a Bio-Inspired Blood Factory for Personalized Healthcare” highlights our BioBlood platform which represents an engineered bio-inspired integrated experimental/modelling platform for normal and abnormal haematopoiesis. Our platform offers a dynamic, 3D perfusion bone marrow biomimicry in a bioreactor. It produces multiple cell types simultaneously and has the potential to be used for transfusion purposes or to discover personalized drug targets.

https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/110516/brief/en?WT.mc_id=exp

New Member – Esther Chen

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Esther Chen has chosen to pursue her PhD in the joint Biomedical Engineering department of Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University with us at the Biological Systems Engineering Lab. Esther received a BSc in Chemical Engineering from ETH Zurich, Switzerland. During her undergraduate studies she worked in the field of green chemistry. Her semester project was on kinetic studies of ring-opening polymerization of polyethylene furanoate (PEF) using bio-compatible initiators. Before graduating, she also completed a 6-month internship in API manufacturing at Janssen-Cilag (Johnson&Johnson). Continuing with her Master’s in Chemical and Bioengineering at ETH, Esther deepened her knowledge on process design and simulation. She completed her thesis in the group of Prof. Klavs Jensen at MIT (Cambridge, MA) on the continuous end-to-end synthesis of ciprofloxacin hydrochloride. Once back in Zurich, she worked in the Macromolecular Engineering Lab led by Prof. Mark Tibbitt on the preparation of photodegradable hydrogels.

To join the Biological Systems Engineering Lab led by Prof. Mantalaris and Dr. Panoskaltsis, she moved to Atlanta, GA. She will join the BSEL as a Student Research Assistant starting in April. Her research will be focused on the development of a 3D model of leukemia.