Natalia Higuita-Castro's Biography

Natalia Higuita-Castro, Associate Professor, The Ohio State University

Dr. Higuita-Castro is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The Ohio State University (OSU). She obtained her Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from OSU, where she spearheaded the development of novel models to simulate the alveolar microenvironment and their implementation to characterize cellular and inflammatory responses during mechanical ventilation, as well as the study of novel pharmaco-protective and biomolecular therapies for ventilator induced lung injury. During her postdoctoral training at the Department of Surgery and the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine at the OSU Wexner Medical Center, she participated and led interdisciplinary research in the fields of lung inflammation, miRNA therapeutics, and direct cell reprogramming. Dr. Higuita-Castro is a HHMI Med into Grad scholar, and an American Heart Association and NIH T32 fellow. Dr. Higuita-Castro’s research focuses on Nanomedicine and Extracellular Vesicle (EV)-based nanocarriers for therapeutic applications, including lung injury and back pain. Over the past years, this effort has yielded multiple intellectual property filings led or co-led by her lab. Dr. Higuita-Castro’s work highlights the significant potential of engineered EVs as next generation nanocarriers for gene therapy applications.