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Caitlin Maikawa

Caitlin Maikawa

Schmidt Science Fellows Boston 2022

Caitlin Maikawa | BASc (Toronto), PhD (Stanford)
Assistant Professor

Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME)
Faculty of Applied Science and Engineering

Email: caitlin.maikawa@utoronto.ca
Website: Biointerfacing Materials Lab

Professor Caitlin Maikawa is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Toronto. Before joining UofT she was a 2022 Schmidt Science Fellow and did her postdoctoral training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital with Prof. Jeffrey Karp and Prof. Yuhan Lee. She did her PhD training with Prof. Eric Appel at Stanford University. She is also on the Early Career Board for ACS Biomacromolecules.
 
Research Team: <10 trainees
Facilities: Polymer materials synthesis/characterization

Research

The Maikawa Lab is an interdisciplinary team that brings together scientists with expertise in biology, material science, chemistry, and medicine to engineer dynamic polymer materials to solve drug delivery and biomedical challenges. Polymer materials are powerful tools to modulate the delivery of therapeutics. Our team works on developing dynamic polymer systems that interface with our body’s biology in order to improve biopharmaceutical delivery. We apply our biointerfacing polymer materials to enhance precision medicine with the goal of increasing treatment efficacy and improving patient outcomes. We use our materials to address key challenges in biopharmaceutical delivery: targeting therapeutics to the disease site, timing the release of therapeutics, and monitoring local biomarkers to monitor or adjust treatments. The technologies that we develop in the Maikawa Lab can be applied to develop therapeutics and monitoring systems for many diseases including diabetes, digestive diseases and autoimmune diseases.

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