Email: epaps@udel.edu
Personal Statement: I have a record of 40+ years of bioengineering and biological research. I started my career working on understanding and applying core scale-up issues for the production of protein therapeutics and cells for cell therapy, including immunotherapies, areas I continued to work continuously since then. Over the last 25 years, my research has also focused on the megakaryocytic blood lineage with emphasis on bioengineering and genomic approaches to generate platelets and megakaryocytes ex vivo for transfusion therapies, and, in the last 10 years on megakaryocytic extracellular vesicles (MkEVs). My laboratory has developed extensive expertise in multiparametric flow cytometry/FACS and its applications in cell-culture biomanufacturing, and hematopoietic and stem-cell research. I am also proficient in analyzing transcriptional (RNAseq) data and have developed transcriptional-data analysis tools, including pathway and signaling analysis based on transcriptional data. More recently my lab is working on dissecting and modeling perfusion bioreactors for continuous biomanufacturing. I have supervised more than 70 PhD students and more than 35 postdoctoral fellows. I have also initiated and directed for 10 years the NIH Predoctoral Biotechnology Training program at Northwestern University, and have participated in another 4 NIH training programs at Northwestern, where I trained more than 10 trainees. I have participated in the NIH Chemistry-Biology Interface (CBI) training program at the Univ. of Delaware. I have also sponsored 4 individual NRSA postdoctoral trainees in my lab. I have published over 320 refereed papers. I am inventor of 12 issued and 7 pending patents. To sum, I have the expertise, leadership, training, and motivation necessary to successfully carry out the proposed research project.
Research Summary: My lab works on two areas of modern, molecular biotechnology and synthetic biology: higher eukaryotic biology & biotechnology now with emphasis on cell and gene therapies of the hematopoietic system, and microbial biotechnology, now with emphasis of fundamental cell-to-cell interactions of complex multicomponent systems including those of the human microbiomes. Eukaryotic biotechnology includes work in hematopoietic stem-cell differentiation, understanding of stem-cell development and clinical applications, experimental culture and assay methods, including flow cytometry and advanced microscopy methods, as well as genetic and genomic tools and experimental animal studies for examining the development of human stem and progenitor cells. A focal area is the biology of cellular microparticles and synthetic bio-nanoparticles, megakaryopoiesis, in vitro platelet production, and use of megakaryocytic microparticles for cell therapies and cargo delivery to stem cells. The microbial biotechnology activities encompass biotechnologies of both solventogenic and acetogenic clostridia, non-phototrophic CO2 fixation, E. coli-based synthetic methylotrophy, and synthetic syntrophic co-cultures. An area of current interest is the study of complex microbial interactions under syntrophic conditions that give rise to previously unknown phenomena including heterologous cell fusion and the intercellular exchange of proteins and nucleic acids via naturally releases prokaryotic extracellular vesicles. The focus pertains to microbiomes of humans and animals but also environmental microbiomes. The two areas of research, although seemingly orthogonal, are complementary and synergistic in development of tools and strategies and benefit each other.
NCBI publication list
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=Papoutsakis+ET&sort=pubdate