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February 2024: Congratulations to former student Ben Gastfriend and postdoc Hope Holt on their recent publication in Science Advances describing an enhanced protocol for differentiation of hPSC-derived pericyte-like cells with overexpression of Notch3 intracellular domain.

January 2024: Fatemeh Yaghoobi joins the Shusta group as a graduate student from the Chemical & Biological Engineering PhD program. Welcome Fatemeh!

December 2023: A new review article from graduate student Michelle Choi describes strategies for engineering CNS-targeting antibody-based therapeutics.

July 2023: Congratulations to Dr. Koji Foreman on successfully defending his dissertation entitled "Modelling of the Blood-Brain Barrier Endothelium and Analysis of the Impacts of Shear Stress" on July 25th!

June 2023: Graduate student Koji Foreman has published a textbook chapter in Stem Cell-Based Neural Model Systems for Brain Disorders.

February 2023: New review article from graduate student Feifan Du in Frontiers in Chemical Engineering describing the role of extracellular matrix proteins in in vitro BBB modeling.

January 2023: Congratulations to graduate student Eun Seo (Michelle) Choi for winning a poster award at the International Brain Barriers Society (IBBS) 1st Keystone Symposium on "Drug Delivery to the Brain: Challenges and Progress"!

January 2023: Melanie Staffenson joins the Shusta group as a graduate student from the Cellular and Molecular Pathology PhD program. Welcome Melanie!

November 2022: Graduate student Liz Appelt's contributions to process optimization for mRNA vaccine production at Afrigen in South Africa are featured on UW-Madison's CBE department website.

August 2022: New paper co-authored by postdocs Moriah Katt and Zhou Ye in Pharmaceutics demonstrates ability of BBB-targeting scFv 46.1 clone to deliver therapeutic payloads to the CNS.

May 2022: Ben Gastfriend successfully defended his doctoral dissertation entitled "Improved models of the human neurovascular unit" on May 9th! Congratulations Dr. Gastfriend!

April 2022: New paper co-authored by postdoctoral fellow Moriah Katt in Scientific Reports describes a screening platform for discovery of blood-brain barrier targeting variable lymphocyte receptors (VLRs).

February 2022: Postdoctoral fellow Zhou Ye (co-authored with graduate student Ben Gastfriend and former postdoctoral fellow Ben Umlauf) publishes original research in Pharmaceutical Research describing enhanced delivery of drugs across the blood-brain barrier using liposomes decorated with the human and murine BBB-targeting single chain antibody fragment, scFv46.1.

February 2022: Postdoctoral fellow Moriah Katt discusses her research on variable lymphocyte receptor (VLR)-mediated drug delivery to the brain in a profile by the Center for Genomic Science Innovation (CGSI) at UW-Madison. Moriah is also a postdoctoral trainee in the Genomic Sciences Training Program (GSTP).

January 2022: The Shusta Lab has an opening for a postdoctoral fellow, starting January-April 2022. Please see "Current Members" for a full description.

December 2021: Graduate student Bill Ding has published a review article in Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering describing the current state of in vitro BBB models of neurologic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease.

November 2021: Soniya Tamhankar joins the Shusta group as a graduate student from the Cellular and Molecular Pathology PhD program, co-advised by Professor Sean Palecek. Her research will focus on using stem-cell derived blood-brain barrier models to investigate mechanisms of neurological diseases like Alzheimer's disease. Welcome Soniya!

November 2021: Graduate student Ben Gastfriend's and Koji Foreman's recent publication in Elife explores the role of Wnt signaling activation on blood-brain barrier property induction in stem cell-derived naive endothelial cells.

November 2021: Graduate students Ben Gastfriend and Koji Foreman as well as postdoctoral fellow Moriah Katt have published a meta-analysis of brain mural cell single-cell transcriptome data with subsequent in vitro validation in the Journal of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism to identify common genetic markers of brain mural cells, including brain pericytes.

October 2021: Congratulations to Feifan Du for winning Best Poster Award at the 2021 Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Center (SCRMC) Fall Conference!

September 2021: Hope Holt, PhD joins the lab as a postdoctoral fellow. Hope's work will focus on understanding key signaling pathways in stem-cell derived in vitro models of the blood-brain barrier. Welcome Hope!

July 2021: Professor Eric Shusta has been appointed Chair of Chemical and Biological Engineering. Read about his interview with the UW-Madison College of Engineering here. Congratulations Professor Shusta!

June 2021: Graduate student Ben Gastfriend co-authors a protocol for generation of brain microvascular endothelial-like cells from stem cells via the extended endothelial culture method (EECM-BMEC-like cells) in order to study interactions between BMECs and immune cells at the blood-brain barrier.

June 2021: Members of the Shusta and Palecek groups meet up for our annual summer picnic on the shore of beautiful Lake Monona.

January 2021: Graduate students Ben Gastfriend and Feifan Du co-author a protocol for generation of brain pericyte-like cells from stem-cell derived neural crest.

January 2021: Michelle Choi joins the Shusta group as a graduate student from the Chemical and Biological Engineering PhD program. Her work will focus on studying antibody-mediated drug delivery to the brain. Welcome Michelle!

December 2020: Postdoctoral fellow Moriah Katt publishes a review in Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering discussing improvement of physiological complexity for in vitro models of the blood-brain barrier

November 2020: Postdoctoral fellow Huilong Luo publishes a review in Pharmaceutics discussing brain drug delivery strategies to target malignancies like glioblastoma.

September 2020: John Ruano-Salguero, PhD joins the Shusta group as a postdoctoral fellow. His research will focus on modifying antibodies for improved brain drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier. Welcome John!

July 2020: Graduate students Koji Foreman and Ben Gastfriend co-author a transcriptomic comparison of human and mouse brain microvessels, published in Scientific Reports.

April 2020: Sarah Boutom joins the Shusta group as a graduate student from the Biomedical Engineering PhD program, co-advised by Professor Sean Palecek. Her work will focus on investigating the role of hypoxia and associated signaling pathways on stem-cell derived blood-brain barrier models. Welcome Sarah!

January 2020: Liz Appelt joins the Shusta group as a graduate student from the Chemical and Biological Engineering PhD program. Her research will focus on modification of lamprey-derived variable lymphocyte receptors to reduce immunogenicity and increase transport of associated drugs across the blood-brain barrier. Welcome Liz!

June 2019: Undergraduate researcher Margaret Snyder won a Hilldale fellowship to continue her work in the lab on human pluripotent stem cell-derived brain pericyte-like cells!

May 2019: Postdoctoral researcher Ben Umlauf's work using lamprey-derived variable lymphocyte receptors to target brain tumors was published at Science Advances and highlighted at UW News!