Mei He, Ph.D.

Dr. Mei He’s research impact and contribution are highlighted in the field of Medical and Biological Engineering, with a focus on extracellular vesicles (EVs) and exosomes -mediated therapeutic delivery and biomarker discovery. Dr. He research brings in novel microfluidic and nanotechnology for surface molecular engineering, cargo loading and transfection, gene editing and multi-omic sequencing, which presents a new way for advancing precision medicine. Her publication on identifying tumor derived EV markers has appeared in the journal of Nature Biomedical Engineering and highlighted as the Editorial Story in 2019. The multiple publications from Dr. He research group received the Most Downloaded Articles of 2016 (LOC), the Featured Cover Story of 2018 (LOC), Technology Readers’ Choice Award of 2018 (SLAS), and Top 100 Read Articles of 2019 (Scientific Reports), and Featured Cover Art from Journal of Controlled Release in 2024. The publication from Her mentored graduate student in journal of Lab on a Chip received 628 Citations. Dr. He published more than ~35 refereed journal papers with an average impact factor >8 and received research funding >$7 million since 2017. Dr. He was named as the senior member of the National Academy of Inventors in 2023. Dr. He is also the Board advisor of Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and The Moore Inventor Fellowship review committee, Vice chair of American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) scientific programing committee, and the Editorial Board Advisor for journal of Pharmaceutics, and Lab on Chip (RSC). Dr. He received the NIH Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award for Early-Stage Investigators in 2019, and the LOC Emerging Investigator Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2019.

Dr. He research innovation leads to more than 20 pending and issued patents, and most of them have been licensed and launched as products on the market by multiple companies. Notably, Dr. He founded the startup company Clara Biotech Inc. in 2018 for advancing the innovative extracellular vesicle isolation. The commercialized ExoRelease kit serves the community for speeding up the extracellular vesicle-based diagnostic and therapeutic development. The NIH NCI’s twitter feed highlighted Clara Biotech and Dr. He’s entrepreneur activity, demonstrating the broad impact of Dr. He research. Clara Biotech has been awarded the prestigious BioTools Innovator 2021 cohort and the Best Video Award among competition from hundreds of biotech startups, and acquired by InnovaPrep in 2023. Dr. He also founded the startup company ExoDeL Inc. in 2022 for developing extracellular vesicle based CRISPR gene therapy. ExoDeL licensed two invention patents from Dr. He research lab with her graduate students as the inventors. Dr. Her inventions, including both CRISPR gene editing, high throughput exosome transfection platform, and AI directed exosome surface engineering, significantly overcome the tissue targeting specificity issue in the field. This research work was also selected to The NIH TARGETED Challenge Phase I in 2023. Dr. He has been highlighted as the UF innovator and her research innovation has been reported by abc WCJB20 Tech Tuesday news and UFHCC News.

Dr. He’s research focuses on precise definition and control of immunity at the molecular level to tissue level, via extracellular vesicles and exosomes -mediated delivery and biological programming strategies, which can be employed in advancing cancer immunotherapy, regenerative medicine, and precision therapeutics. The long-standing interest is to understand immunity communication and delivery for translating into novel therapeutics and treatments against cancers, autoimmune diseases, and infectious diseases which immune responses are the central player.