Brittany Hartwell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering, University of Minnesota
Photo credit: John Chow
“Engineering albumin-hitchhiking intranasal vaccines with enhanced transmucosal uptake to promote immunity"
To combat the global HIV epidemic and evolving threats such as SARS-CoV-2, immunization strategies are needed that elicit protection at mucosal portals of entry to halt transmission.
Immunization directly through airway surfaces is effective in driving mucosal immunity, but poor vaccine uptake across mucosal barriers is a major limitation.
Dr. Hartwell’s winning proposal uses a strategy of ‘albumin hitchhiking’ that enables an intranasal vaccine to efficiently bypass mucosal barriers in the nose in order to promote stronger mucosal immunity.
About Brittany Hartwell:
Dr. Brittany Hartwell is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota.
Her lab’s research in immunoengineering combines perspectives from biomolecular engineering, drug delivery, and immunology to develop molecular platforms that can target specific cells and tissues of the immune system to direct the response, with a particular focus on ‘tuning immunity’ through the mucosa.
This work has applications ranging from the development of antigen-specific immunotherapies that induce immune tolerance against autoimmune disease to development of targeted vaccines that induce immune activation against infectious disease.
Before starting at the University of Minnesota in Fall 2021, Dr. Hartwell was a postdoc with Darrell Irvine at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she worked on developing targeted mucosal vaccines against HIV and SARS-CoV-2 in mice and nonhuman primates.
As a postdoc, she was affiliated with the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard.
Her postdoctoral research on developing intranasal vaccines was recently featured on the cover of Science Translational Medicine and recognized with a Koch Institute Image Award.
Dr. Hartwell obtained her Ph.D. in biomolecular engineering with Cory Berkland at the University of Kansas as a Madison and Lila Self Graduate Fellow. Her doctoral research focused on developing an antigen-specific immunotherapy to treat multiple sclerosis while determining cellular and molecular mechanisms of tolerance.
Prior to KU, Dr. Hartwell received her B.S. in chemical and biological engineering from Iowa State University, where she was also involved in NCAA D1 athletics and music.
She ran cross country and track for Iowa State, was a four-year letterwinner, and played viola in the Iowa State symphony orchestra as well as numerous chamber groups.
Outside of work, Dr. Hartwell stays busy with her family (husband and two daughters, aged 4 and 1) and enjoys being active outdoors, distance running, and hiking.