Ashish Kulkarni
University of Massachusetts, MA·Biomedical Engineering·Early-career
Inflammation is the immune system's normal response to invaders, but when it drags on for months or years it turns into chronic disease. A key trigger is the inflammasome, a multi-protein assembly inside immune cells that switches on cutting enzymes called caspases and releases inflammatory signaling molecules.
- Fields
Biomedical Engineering
Microbiology & Immunology
Materials Science
- Topics
inflammasome
innate immunity
polymeric nanoparticles
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Engineer a library of polymeric nanoparticles whose surface and core properties are varied one at a time, to establish structure–property–function relationships for inflammasome activation, the immune complex that drives inflammatory signaling.
- Characterize how these nanomaterials interact with macrophages, monocytes, dendritic cells, and neutrophils, using a high-throughput imaging platform that monitors inflammasome activation in real time.
- Monitor inflammasome activation in living animals using engineered imaging probes, to test whether cell-culture design rules hold in vivo.
- Determine how surface and core chemical patterns of supramolecular polymeric nanoparticles influence cellular uptake and intracellular fate in immune cells.
- Dissect the mechanisms of nanomaterial-induced inflammasome activation by assessing lysosomal disruption with cathepsin B maturation and calcium influx with mitochondrial dysfunction.
More about the research
Engineered nanoparticles are widely used to carry drugs to immune cells, yet evidence from this lab and others indicates that many of these materials switch on inflammasomes non-specifically — which could make the very disease being treated worse. The central question across these projects is which physical and chemical features of a nanoparticle decide whether it provokes an inflammasome response, and by what molecular route.
Why it matters
Nanoparticle medicines and vaccines are increasingly aimed at immune cells, yet unintended inflammasome activation can drive inflammation and potentially worsen chronic inflammatory disease. Design rules linking particle surface and core chemistry to the strength of that response could help make nanomedicines safer, and could equally be used deliberately — to boost vaccine responses or to build probes that report inflammation — benefiting patients with chronic inflammatory conditions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Debarshi Roy
Alcorn State University, MS·Biomedical Engineering
Engineer the protein corona, the layer of body proteins that coats a nanoparticle, on biomimetic materials to control how the particles interact with the immune system.
Qian Chen
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Materials Science
Identify the surface forces that cause ligand molecules to form patches in specific regions of nanoparticles. The goal is to learn how to break particle symmetry and create directional interactions, combining theory, simulation and experiments.
John Clegg
University of Oklahoma, OK·Biomedical Engineering
Test whether activating circulating monocytes and neutrophils, using macrophage-targeted nanogels carrying interferon gamma or interleukin 10, drives their infiltration into the brain in healthy mice and in mouse models of inflammatory disease.
The school
University of Massachusetts: 28 labs on PI Pages, $282M a year on research, 337 research doctorates a year.
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