Jason Andresen

• MIT

In calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD), mechanosensitive valvular cells respond to fibrosis- and calcification-induced tissue stiffening, further driving pathophysiology. No pharmacotherapeutics are available to treat CAVD because of the paucity of (i) appropriate experimental models that recapitulate this complex environment and (ii) benchmarking...

Neuroinflammation is a hallmark of neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Microglia, the brain's immune cells, express many of the AD‐risk loci identified in genome wide association studies and present a promising target for anti‐inflammatory RNA therapeutics but are difficult to transfect with current methods. Here, we exa...

In calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD), mechanosensitive valvular cells respond to fibrosis- and calcification-induced tissue stiffening, further driving pathophysiology. No pharmacotherapeutics are available to treat CAVD, due to the lack of: 1) appropriate experimental models that recapitulate this complex environment; and 2) benchmarking novel...

Nucleic acid therapeutics offer a new paradigm to rapidly respond to global health problems. The versatility of nucleic acids, especially in RNA therapies, provides the ability to tune levels of specific protein expression, achieving downregulation through short interfering RNA (siRNA) or upregulation by messenger RNA (mRNA) administration. Recent...

Recent medical advances have exploited the ability to address a given disease at the underlying level of transcription and translation. These treatment paradigms utilize nucleic acids – including short interfering RNA (siRNA), microRNA (miRNA), antisense oligonucleotides (ASO), and messenger RNA (mRNA) – to achieve a desired outcome ranging from ge...

Given its potential for high-resolution, customizable, and waste-free fabrication of medical devices and in vitro biological models, 3-dimensional (3D) bioprinting has broad utility within the biomaterials field. Indeed, 3D bioprinting has to date been successfully used for the development of drug delivery systems, the recapitulation of hard biolog...

Developing strategies to deliver the required dose of therapeutics into target tissues and cell populations within the body is a principal aim of controlled release and drug delivery. Specifically, there is an interest in developing formulations that can achieve drug concentrations within the therapeutic window, for extended periods of time, with t...

The development of new material platforms can improve our ability to study biological processes. Here, we developed a water‐compatible variant of a "click"‐like polymerization between alkynoates and secondary amines to form B‐aminoacrylate synthetic polyethylene glycol (PEG) based hydrogels. These materials are easy to access ‐ PEG alkynoate was sy...

The development of new material platforms can improve our ability to study biological processes. Here, we developed a water‐compatible variant of a "click"‐like polymerization between alkynoates and secondary amines to form B‐aminoacrylate synthetic polyethylene glycol (PEG) based hydrogels. These materials are easy to access ‐ PEG alkynoate was sy...

RNAs are a promising class of therapeutics given their ability to regulate protein concentrations at the cellular level. Developing safe and effective strategies to deliver RNAs remains important for realizing their full clinical potential. Here, we develop lipid nanoparticle formulations that can deliver short interfering RNAs (for gene silencing)...

RNAs are a promising class of therapeutics given their ability to regulate protein concentrations at the cellular level. Developing safe and effective strategies to deliver RNAs remains important for realizing their full clinical potential. Here, we develop lipid nanoparticle formulations that can deliver short interfering RNAs (for gene silencing)...

In calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD), microcalcifications originating from nanoscale calcifying vesicles disrupt the aortic valve (AV) leaflets, which consist of three (biomechanically) distinct layers: the fibrosa, spongiosa, and ventricularis. CAVD has no pharmacotherapy and lacks in vitro models as a result of complex valvular biomechanical f...