Mark Bathe, PhD
Revolutionary applications of nucleic acid nanotechnology.
Using nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) to engineer revolutionary new materials at the nanometer-scale for therapeutics, vaccines, computing, and sensing.
Staff
Research:
The mission of the Bathe lab is to explore the use of nucleic acids as highly programmable nanoscale materials for revolutionary applications including the targeted in vivo delivery of therapeutic nucleic acids; massive molecular data storage, retrieval, and computing; and quantum computing and sensing, amongst other applications. Our lab develops both design and fabrication procedures based on principles of nucleic acid nanotechnology, which offers the unique ability to program RNA and DNA to form complex, custom nanoscale materials with unusual synthetic properties. Specifically, unlike other materials, nucleic acid based materials are fully controllable in their 2D and 3D structure as well as their chemical composition, which may incorporate peptides, lipids, sugars, chromophores, synthetic polymers, as well as nearly any other secondary molecule for functional purposes. These unique capabilities offer the ability to program molecular functions ranging from immune cell stimulation for vaccine applications to targeted therapeutic delivery of siRNA or CRISPR to organizing chromophore molecules for quantum information processing and computing. We are exploring new means of designing rationally, fabricating at high scale and quality, and validating in vitro and in vivo these nucleic acid based materials for the discovery and commercial translation of revolutionary new materials to solve leading societal problems worldwide.
Biography:
Professor Bathe obtained his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral Degrees from MIT working in the Departments of Mechanical, Chemical, and Biological Engineering before moving to the University of Munich to carry out his postdoctoral research. He returned to MIT in 2009 to join the faculty in the Department of Biological Engineering, where he runs an interdisciplinary research group focused on the targeted delivery of therapeutic nucleic acids and vaccines, phenotypic profiling of neuronal circuits involved in psychiatric disease, and engineering nucleic acid materials for highly parallel molecular computing and massive data storage. Professor Bathe is member of the HMS Initiative for RNA Medicine and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard.
