Gradinaru Lab
Principal Investigator: Viviana Gradinaru
Institution: California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA)
Primary Subfield: Neuroscience
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
PROJECT SUMMARY: This interdisciplinary established team initiative will provide the neuroscience community with a toolkit of engineered adeno-associated virus (AAV) reagents for cell type-specific transgene expression in non-transgenic rodents and non-human primates (NHP). While existing AAV capsids engineered for enhanced BBB crossing in macaque NHP from us and others vastly outperform AAV9 after intravenous injection, they remain far short of the potency of equivalent tools in rodent. To achieve functional parity, we will leverage our established track-record in AAV capsid engineering paired with mechanistic insight based on blood-brain barrier (BBB) receptor-mediated transcytosis pathways we recently discovered. The resulting NHP capsids will enable brain-wide payload delivery, e.g. for efficient primate cell type-specific enhancer screening, and utilization of existing gene regulatory element strategies for neuronal cell type specificity (Aim 1). Our approach will utilize structure-informed capsid libraries selected in vitro against BBB receptors known to promote strong transcytosis and we will scale up our screening technologies for discovery of additional novel BBB receptors…
Active NIH Awards
- 5U01MH139785-02: Scaled identification of receptor-targeted AAVs for potent and cell type-specific transgene delivery (2026)
- 1U01MH139785-01: Scaled identification of receptor-targeted AAVs for potent and cell type-specific transgene delivery (2025)
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