Andrea Joseph

Assistant Professor

303H Bowne Hall

ajosep29@syr.edu

315.443.1931

Lab/ Center/ Institute affiliation – BioInspired Institute

Areas of Expertise:

  • Drug delivery
  • Nanomedicine
  • Extracellular vesicles
  • Neuroinflammation
  • Maternal-fetal health

Advancements towards women’s health and children’s health are limited by our failure to understand the unique and complex biology of these populations. Pregnancy, at their intersection, is no less mysterious. Many adverse pregnancy outcomes, including preterm birth, stillbirth, and preeclampsia, have no clear root cause nor effective cure. Further, drug delivery to mom and/or baby is limited by our poor characterization of biological barriers like vaginal mucus and fetal circulation and how these barriers are altered by inflammation and associated adverse outcomes. Nanotechnology can be leveraged to better understand the biochemical features of pregnancy in health and disease and to develop more effective, targeted therapeutics for pregnant people. My research group will focus on two distinct biological environments that are vulnerable to inflammation during pregnancy: the vaginal microbiome and the fetal brain. Our long-term goal is to develop novel nanotherapeutic platforms that can attenuate inflammation to broadly promote maternal, fetal, and neonatal health.

Honors and Awards:

  • Robin Chemers Neustein Postdoctoral Fellowship, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (2023-2024)
  • President’s Plenary Award, Society for Reproductive Investigation (2023)
  • Kumar Memorial Lecture Award, University of Pennsylvania (2022)
  • Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31), Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (2018-2021)

Selected Publications:

Corresponding author

  1. A. Joseph, L. Anton, Y. Guan, B. Ferguson, I. Mirro, N. Meng, M. France, J. Ravel, and M. Elovitz. Extracellular vesicles from vaginal Gardnerella vaginalis and Mobiluncus mulieris contain distinct proteomic cargo and induce inflammatory pathways, npj Biofilms & Microbiomes (2023)
  2. A. Joseph, E. Lewis, B. Ferguson, Y. Guan, L. Anton, and M. Elovitz. Intrauterine colonization with Gardnerella vaginalis and Mobiluncus mulieris induces maternal inflammation but not preterm birth in a mouse model, American Journal of Reproductive Immunology. (2023)
  3. A. Joseph and E. Nance. Nanotherapeutics and the Brain, Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. (2022)
  4. A. Joseph, G. Simo, T. Gao, N. Alhindi, N. Xu, D. Graham, L. Gamble, E. Nance. Surfactants influence polymer nanoparticle fate in the brain, Biomaterials. (2021)
  5. A. Joseph, C. Nyambura, D. Bondurant, K. Corry, D. Beebout, T. Wood, J. Pfaendtner, E. Nance. Formulation and efficacy of catalase-loaded nanoparticles for the treatment of neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, Pharmaceutics. (2021)
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