Michael Paulaitis, PhD

I re-joined Johns Hopkins as a faculty member of the Center for Nanomedicine in the Wilmer Eye Institute, in 2016, after serving as chair and a faculty member of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Hopkins, and thereafter as Ohio Eminent Scholar in Nanobiotechnology and Molecular Self-Assembly at Ohio State University. My research interests as Ohio Eminent Scholar focused on developing methods for isolating and characterizing extracellular vesicles derived from both cell lines and patient samples, including the specific profiling of microRNA encapsulated in these vesicles. As an investigator in the Center for Nanomedicine, I am fortunate to have developed a close collaboration with Dr. Jim Handa in the Wilmer Eye Institute, who brings to our collaboration an invaluable clinical perspective and 25 years of research expertise in AMD. This collaboration specifically, and my Wilmer appointment in general, have allowed me to develop a number of independent research projects which focus on my interests in microRNA signatures of diseases and the role extracellular vesicles play as vehicles for intercellular microRNA transfer related to various diseases that affect our aging population.