Biju Parekkadan

Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering
Associate Professor, Medicine

Phone:848-445-6563
Fax:
Email:biju.parekkadan@rutgers.edu
Office:BME-304
Office Hours: Upon request

Education

PhD, Chemical and Medical Engineering, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2008

MD Studies, Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, 2005-2007

BS, Biomedical Engineering, Rutgers University, 2003

Honors

  • Translational Pioneer Award in Cell & Gene Therapy, Finalist (2016)
  • Top Innovators Under 35, MIT Technology Review, Finalist (2015)
  • Associate Scientific Advisor, Science Translational Medicine (2014)
  • Young Mentor of the Year Award, Harvard Medical School (2013)
  • Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), National Institutes of Health, Office of the White House (2011)
  • Invited Graduation Speaker, Harvard-MIT Division of HST (2008)
  • Graduate Research Award, Biomedical Engineering Society (2007)
  • Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation (2003)
  • Intramural Research Training Award, NIH/Whitaker Foundation (2002)

Professional Affiliations

  • Co-Founder, Director, Sentien Biotechnologies, Inc.
  • Harvard Stem Cell Institute, Affiliated Faculty
  • Broad Institute, Affiliated Faculty
  • American Society of Cell and Gene Therapy
  • Biomedical Engineering Society
  • Cancer Institute of New Jersey, Affiliated Faculty

Research Interests

Our group develops new platform technologies for cell and gene therapy. To this end, we converge knowledge and techniques of cell/gene/tissue engineering, drug delivery, biomaterials, micro/macro-fluidic bioreactors, transport phenomena, chemical kinetics, computational biology, and bioprocess engineering. Our lab collaborates extensively with biology and clinical experts in hematology, oncology, rheumatology, surgery, and infectious disease to design and execute IND-enabling studies in support of human trials. Animal models of these disease areas are created in-house and pre-clinical studies of experimental therapeutics are performed using advanced principles of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. The research is conducted with a mindfulness of regulatory science and intellectual property for potential opportunities to translate the work with industrial partners or as a new venture.

Selected Publications

  • Parekkadan B, Milwid JM. Mesenchymal Stem Cells as Therapeutics. Ann Rev Biomed Eng, 12:87-117, 2010.
  • Lee J, Wang J, Li M, Milwid JM, Dunham J, Vinegoni C, Gorbatov R, Iwamoto Y, Wang F, Shen K, Hatfield K, Enger M, Shafiee S, McCormack E, Ebert B, Weissleder R, Yarmush ML, Parekkadan B. Implantable Microenvironments to Attract Hematopoietic Stem/Cancer Cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2012 Nov 27;109(48):19638-43.
  • Li M, Tilles AW, Milwid JM, Lee J, Parekkadan B. Phenotypic and Functional Characterization of Human Mesenchymal Stromal Cells in Hollow Fiber Bioreactors. J Tissue Eng Regen Med 2012 May;6(5):369-77
  • Shen K, Elman JS, Hicks DF, Bohr S, Luk S, Murray R, Iwamoto Y, Pena K, Milwid JM, Wang F, Seker E, Yarmush ML, Toner M, Sgroi D, Parekkadan B. A Micropatterned Tumor Stromal Assay for Identifying Drugs Targeting Cancer-Stroma Interactions. Nature Communications 2014 Dec 9;5:5662.
  • Elman JS, Murray R, Wang F, Shen K, Gao S, Yarmush ML, Tannous B, Weissleder R, Parekkadan B. Pharmacokinetics of natural and engineered secreted factors delivered by mesenchymal stromal cells. PLoS One 2014 Feb 21;9(2):e89882.
  • Bersani F, Lee J, Yu M, Morris R, Desai R, Ramaswamy S, Toner M, Haber DA, Parekkadan B. Bioengineered implantable scaffolds as a tool to study stromal-derived factors in metastatic cancer models. Cancer Res 2014 Dec 15;74(24):7229-38.
  • Fletcher, AL, Elman J, Astarita J, Murray R, Saeidi N, D’Rozario J, Knoblich K, Brown, FD, Schildberg, F, Nieves, JM, Heng T, Boyd RL, Turley SJ, Parekkadan B. Lymph node fibroblastic reticular cell transplants show robust therapeutic efficacy in models of high-mortality murine sepsis. Science Translational Medicine. 2014 Aug 13;6(249):249ra109.
  • Lee J, Kohl N, Shanbhag S, Parekkadan B. Scaffold-integrated microchips for end-to-end tumor cell isolation and xenograft formation. 2015 Technology Dec;3(4):179-188
  • Shen K, Luk S, Elman JS, Murray R, Mukundan S, Parekkadan B. Suicide gene-engineered stromal cells reveal a dynamic regulation of cancer metastasis. Nature Scientific Reports 2016 Feb 19;6:21239
  • Tosi L, Sridhara V, Yang Y, Guan D, Schpilker P, Segata N, Larman HB, Parekkadan B. Long Adapter Single Stranded Oligonucleotide Probes for Massively Multiplexed Cloning of Kilobase Genome Regions. Nature Biomedical Engineering (accepted, 2017).