New Technologies for Measuring and Mapping Inflammation
We are developing engineering-driven technologies to enable direct, high-resolution measurement of molecular and cellular activity within human tissues. By embedding arrays of microsensors and sampling probes in tissue environments, we aim to continuously monitor biochemical and biophysical signals and define how their perturbation drives inflammation and immune dysregulation. These tissue-integrated platforms are coupled with multi-omics profiling and AI-based analysis to generate comprehensive, dynamic models of inflammatory processes.
Our initial efforts focus on human skin tissue, which provides an accessible and physiologically relevant model to dissect inflammatory dynamics. While advances in genomics and single-cell biology have revealed much about the behavior of individual cells, understanding how billions of cells interact within intact tissues remains a major challenge. Our integrated platforms are enabling the first holistic and real-time measurements of immune cell activity within tissue, allowing us to identify molecular tipping points that lead to pathological inflammation. Ultimately, this approach will inform new strategies to predict, prevent, and control inflammation-driven diseases.
Bio: Shana Kelley is the President of Bioengineering at Biohub, Head of Biohub Chicago and the Neena B. Schwartz Professor at Northwestern in the Departments of Chemistry, Biomedical Engineering, and Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics.
Kelley has pioneered new methods for tracking molecular and cellular analytes with unprecedented sensitivity. Her work has been recognized with the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award, the Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award, the Steacie Prize, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar award, an NSF CAREER Award, a Dreyfus New Faculty Award, and she was also named a “Top 100 Innovator” by MIT’s Technology Review. Kelley is also a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, and the American Institute of Biological and Medical Engineering. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. Her work is extensively cited, and she has over 100 papers cited more than 100 times.
Kelley is an inventor on over 50 patents issued worldwide. She is a founder of five life sciences companies, GeneOhm Sciences (acquired by Becton Dickinson in 2005), Xagenic Inc. (acquired by General Atomics in 2017), CTRL Therapeutics (founded in 2019), Arma Biosciences (founded in 2021) and Glimmer Therapeutics (founded in 2024).