Biography
Research focus:
Dr. Anna Jezierski’s research focus is to leveraging induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) towards:
- developing translational 2D and 3D neuro platforms, focused on modeling the central nervous systems and blood brain barrier and
- developing the next generation of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) engineered iPSC-derived immunotherapies with anti-tumor activity.
Research Interest:
Dr. Anna Jezierski is a Research Officer at the Department of Translational Biosciences in the Human Health Therapeutics Research Center at the National Research Council of Canada. Her research focus is on leveraging human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to develop more predictive and translational models of the central nervous system (CNS) and the blood brain barrier (BBB) combining stem cells, microfluidic chips and 3D tissue bioprinting technologies. These models are routinely utilized to study the BBB permeability of CNS targeting biotherapeutics, neurotropic viruses and immunotherapies. A parallel research focus is to leverage iPSCs as a renewable and scalable cell source to generate immune cells, namely natural killer cells, engineered to express chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) as novel sources of “off-the-shelf” immunotherapies targeting hematological malignancies and solid tumors.
Selected Publications:
- Stanimirovic DB and Jezierski A. Blood–brain barrier models in pre-clinical assessment of CNS-targeting cell and gene therapies. Cell and Gene Therapy Insights 5(7):937-947, 2019
- Alimoti JB, Ribecco-Lutkiewicz M, Sodja C, Jezierski A, Stanimirovic DB, Liu Q, Haqqani AS, Conlan, W and Bani-Yaghoub M. Zika virus crosses an in vitro human blood brain barrier model. Fluids and Barriers CNS 15(1):15, 2018
- Ribecco-Lutkiewicz M, Sodja C, Haukenfrer, J, Haqqani AS, Li D, Zachar P, Baumann E, Ball M, Huang J, Rukhlova M, Martina M, Qing L, Stanimirovic DB, Jezierski A and Bani-Yaghoub, M. A novel human induced pluripotent stem cell blood-brain barrier model: Applicability to study antibody-triggered receptor-mediated transcytosis. Sci Rep 8(1):1873, 2018