Natalie Artzi is a rising star in the field of intelligent nanomaterials for medical applications.
Her research has defined a new niche at the intersection of biomaterials science, biology, and medicine that examines the contextual and reciprocal interactions between materials and tissues to improve human health.
“David Kabiller recognizes the promise of nanoscience for medicine. We have the power and responsibility to leverage nanomaterials to improve human health and society.
“My team’s interdisciplinary work leverages engineering, biology and medicine to make nanomaterials for the early detection of disease and for improving the efficacy of therapies.”
Artzi is an assistant professor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, a principal research scientist at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and an associate member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. She received her B.Sc. and Ph.D. from Technion– Israel Institute of Technology.
Her postdoctoral training at MIT focused on studying biomaterials and their tissue interactions to rationally design materials with optimal performance. She has continued this line of work at Harvard Medical School, where she has been working on the design of scaffolds for local delivery of nanoparticle-based therapeutics, rather than systemic delivery. Through the identification of basic mechanisms by which materials interact with tissues, Artzi has developed tunable and disease-specific materials, demonstrating that the paradigm of personalized medicine can be applied to biomaterial design and drug delivery. Her approach has resulted in notable improvement in therapeutic outcomes.
Artzi’s pioneering work has changed the way we view and develop materials as part of a diagnostic and therapeutic toolkit. By studying these interactions, she seeks to propel technologies from bench to bedside.
