Head of Structural Nanomedicines, Gene and Cell Therapy Institute
Natalie Artzi, PhD is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Artzi serves as the Head of Structural Nanomedicines for the Mass General Brigham Gene and Cell Therapy Institute. She is a Principal Research Scientist at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science at MIT, is one of twelve faculty members elected to become core faculty at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and a Member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Leveraging material science, chemistry, imaging, and biology, Dr. Artzi's laboratory is dedicated to designing smart biomaterial platforms and medical devices to improve human health.
Trained as a chemical engineer at the Technion (Israel Institute of Technology) and MIT, Artzi pioneered basic understanding of the contextual performance of biomaterials under different environments and pathological states, and concepts learned have changed the way we view materials. Materials and devices are designed to be tissue responsive, that is, to sense and respond to specific cues in the tissue microenvironment that are altered in the face of disease. Her multidisciplinary team works on developing materials for diagnosis and therapy, including the engineering of libraries of nanoparticles for targeted gene therapy, and exploits the toolkit available for material scientists to create multifaceted medical devices.
Artzi has received many honors including the inaugural Kabiller Rising Star Award in Nanotechnology and Nanomedicine, Acta Biomaterialia Silver Medal, the Clemson Award for Applied Research, the Stepping Strong Innovator Award, Mid-Career Award from the Society for Biomaterials, Controlled Release Society Young Investigator Award, Bright Futures Prize, and the Massachusetts Life Science Center for women entrepreneurs. Artzi has recently been awarded a $27M ARPA-H grant to develop a disease-agnostic innate immunotherapeutic RNA platform to treat cancer and infectious diseases. Artzi's passion lies in medical innovation and as a biomedical researcher, professor, and an entrepreneur she works to translate new technologies to the clinic.
