Biomedical engineer Sangeeta Bhatia, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), had already accomplished a lot when The Scientist covered her work in 2006 and then in 2013. She had pioneered the field of biomedical microelectromechanical systems (Bio-MEMS), in which microfabrication technology is used to create devices for biomedical applications. She had also created a miniaturized liver outside the body, started a company, and launched programs to combat the high attrition rates of women in STEM—all while being a devoted mother of two. “The only question [when I was growing up] was whether I would be a doctor, an engineer, or an entrepreneur,” Bhatia said at the time. “The joke in my family now is that ultimately I ended up becoming all three.”
Image credit:Robert E. Klein/AP, ©HHMI, Flynn Larsen for Ludwig Cancer Research, Modified by Janette Lee-Latour.
Biomedical engineer Sangeeta Bhatia, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), had already accomplished a lot when The Scientist covered her work in 2006 and then in 2013. She had pioneered the field of biomedical microelectromechanical systems (Bio-MEMS), in which microfabrication technology is used to create devices for biomedical applications. She had also created a miniaturized liver outside the body, started a company, and launched programs to combat the high attrition rates of women in STEM—all while being a devoted mother of two. “The only question [when I was growing up] was whether I would be a doctor, an engineer, or an entrepreneur,” Bhatia said at the time. “The joke in my family now is that ultimately I ended up becoming all three.”
To celebrate The Scientist’s 40th Anniversary, we spoke with Bhatia again to see how her research has evolved over the past 13 years. Bhatia described her work in cancer and infectious disease research, her recent entrepreneurial efforts, why the liver is still the best organ, and how she measures success.
Liver Diseases, Satellite Organs, and Advanced Diagnostics
Bhatia’s work in Bio-MEMS and liver research has continued to yield major innovations. Not long after 2013, her lab started working on infectious diseases of the liver, including hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and the two most virulent forms of malaria. “We worked a lot in Southeast Asia and were able to report the first transcriptome of a dormant form of a human malaria [strain] that hides in the liver, and it can reactivate,” Bhatia explained.1 “That was really exciting.”
After making a range of fundamental discoveries about the liver, including the conditions hepatocytes needed to survive outside the body,2,3 Bhatia teamed up with vascular bioengineer Christopher Chen, of Boston University, to translate some of her discoveries. At the time, most research had focused on using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to create liver cells, since this approach had been successful in generating pancreatic beta cells for patients with diabetes. However, Bhatia said that when liver cells derived from iPSCs were transplanted into mice, they failed to fully function, never making it past the fetal stages.4 “[But] we had recognized that the liver [provides] this opportunity, which is that during regeneration, it’s the mature liver cell that actually divides without a stem cell,” said Bhatia.
Bhatia and Chen realized that they could provide donor livers with the right cues for engraftment, allowing them to survive and proliferate upon transplantation.5 In 2020, the duo started a company called Satellite Bio, which generates therapeutic liver implants known as satellite organs. “The company figured out how to [expand liver cells without immortalization] under good manufacturing practice conditions at scale, so we can take a liver [cell] and expand it 10 million times, and so we have a [therapeutic] product,” said Bhatia.
Bhatia has mentored around 80 graduate students and postdocs, some of whom have gone on to found their own companies.
Justin Knight
Taking a multidisciplinary approach has always been Bhatia’s strong suit. By combining chemistry, synthetic biology, and bioengineering, her lab has developed a new class of materials known as synthetic biomarkers: enzyme-based sensors that can be deployed inside the body for advanced diagnostics. “The basic idea was that the materials could travel through the body and detect disease very early,” she explained. “When the sensors were activated, they would give off a signal in a biofluid, like urine, breath, or blood, and that way you could detect diseases that did not have sensitive enough biomarkers.” With applications from cancer to pediatric pneumonia, synthetic biomarkers provided fertile ground for innovation. “I’ve trained lots of people in that technology, and they’ve gone on to do it in their own labs and taken it in new directions,” Bhatia added.
Bhatia is fascinated by the concept of cancer interception: detecting and arresting tumors before they become lethal. “There’s a group of researchers here that I’m part of that are very interested in ovarian cancer, and we now know that it’s born in the fallopian tube, so I have a big program in ovarian cancer interception, which I’m excited about,” she said.
Launching Clinical Trials and Flexing Entrepreneurial Muscles
Satellite Bio is one of eight companies Bhatia has launched based on her research, and it begins its first clinical trial of satellite livers next month. “It’s exhilarating and terrifying,” Bhatia remarked. “There are so many things that have led to this moment. Now [the team is] writing the clinical protocols, and it’s like, it’s really happening!” However, she remains humble about her contribution: “Many hands that have touched this work.” Several of Bhatia’s other companies are also on the verge of beginning clinical trials.
Just as important to Bhatia is that other women in STEM have the same entrepreneurial opportunities; based on a 20-year analysis, she and former MIT president Susan Hockfield discovered that only 9 percent of MIT’s spin-out companies were started by women faculty members. This lack of parity spurred Bhatia to action. “We started an experiment, which we called the Faculty Founder Initiative, which is now sponsored by Royalty Pharma, and it’s basically an 18-month program that I run with the Sloan Business School here, and it’s focused solely on faculty, to cultivate their entrepreneurship,” she said.
Four years later, the program has enabled 20 faculty members to raise 90 million USD for startups and is now expanding to Oxford University. While starting a company seems intimidating to many academics, Bhatia is passionate about enabling their entrepreneurial efforts. “It’s like a muscle, once you learn how to [exercise] it, the muscle gets stronger,” she commented.
This year also marks 10 years since Bhatia founded the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine, named after donors Curt and Kathy Marble, long-time supporters of MIT. “The idea was to fund high-risk research at this interface of nanotechnology and medicine, and to create a community of trainees, the next generation of leaders,” Bhatia explained. “Many trainees from different countries and different disciplines, and lots of things have come out of that, lots of papers and patents, and so that’s been really nice to sort of broaden our community.”
According to Bhatia, her major professional accomplishment has been seeing her trainees advance their careers. “There’s 80 or so grad students and postdocs that are out there in the ecosystem and hopefully taking our way of doing science forward which is collaborative and creative and joyful,” she remarked. Many of them have stayed in academia, while others have also become inventors and CEOs of their own companies. “It’s really great to see them thriving and also helping each other,” said Bhatia.
For young women in STEM, Bhatia said the key to success is to lean into one’s authentic self. “If you can take ownership of who you want to be [within science or academia or being a working mom]I think it makes you stronger in all dimensions,” she said. She also emphasized that she never expected her career to take this path. “We’re all so focused on being strategic and planning our journey, and the truth of the matter is that the field I ended up in didn’t exist on the day I graduated,” Bhatia concluded. “The best things that happen are surprises.”