Laura Niklason

Laura Niklason
Alma mater	University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign University of Chicago University of Michigan Medical School
Academic career
Institutions	Yale University Duke University

Laura E. Niklason is Nicholas Greene Professor of anesthesiology and biomedical engineering at Yale University. She is the co-founder of Humacyte and specializes in vascular and lung engineering. Her work on lab-grown lungs was recognized as one of the top 50 most important inventions of 2010 by Time magazine.

Education

Niklason holds a BS in physics and a BA in Biophysics from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign campus). She earned her MD at the University of Michigan and a PhD in Biophysics at the University of Chicago.

Career

Niklason was a faculty member at Duke University from 1998 to 2005. In 2004, Niklason along with doctors Shannon Dahl and Juliana Blum co-founded Humacyte, an organization producing humanacellular matrix products for both vascular and non-vascular applications. In 2010, Niklason and her colleagues were able to successfully create in the lab a rat lung that could inhale and exhale carbon dioxide. In 2013, Niklason along with Duke researcher Jeffery Lawson developed a bioengineered blood vessel, which Lawson grafted into an artery in a Duke patient's arm.

In 2016, Niklason was named as the Nicholas Greene Professor of Anesthesiology and Biomedical Engineering at Yale. As part of a research team, Niklason conducted clinical trials into the effectiveness of giving patients experiencing kidney failure bio-engineered blood vessels.

Philanthropy

The Brady W. Dougan and Laura E. Niklason House at University of Chicago was named for her.

Awards and honors

• 2017: Named to Fortune's Digital Health Care Leaders list for her work in regenerative medicine.
• 2014: National Academy of Inventors Fellow
• 2011: Winner of Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Innovators Award for 2011, for development of "off-the-self" tissue engineered vascular graft to treat patients with vascular disease. Award went to Humacyte, Inc, of which Niklason is the Founder.
• 2011: Winner of Frost & Sullivan Growth, Innovation & Leadership Award 2011, for development of engineered vascular graft. Award went to Humacyte Inc, of which Niklason is Founder.
• 2010: 50 best inventions of 2010 (engineered lung) Time
• 2008: College of Fellows, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)
• 2001: One of twenty-one U.S. News & World Report Innovators for 2001
• 2001: Hunt scholar, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke university
• 2000: Discover magazine award for technological innovation (finalist in the health category)
• 2000: Selected by the National Academy of Engineering for Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering

Publications

Niklason is the co-author of more than 120 publications. A selected list follows:

• Niklason, L., Gao, J., Abbott, W.M., Hirschi, K.K., Houser, S., Marini, R., Langer, R. "Functional Arteries Grown in Vitro," Science, (1999), 5413, 489 – 493.
• Borel, C., McKee, A., Parra, A., Haglund, M., Solan, A., Prabhakar, V., Sheng, H., Warner, D., Niklason, L. "Possible Role for Vascular Cell Proliferation in Cerebral Vasospasm After Subarachnoid Hemorrhage", Stroke, (2003), 34:427-433.
• Poh, M., Boyer, M., Dahl, S., Pedrotty, D., Banik, S., McKee, J., Klinger, R., Counter, C., Niklason, L. "Blood Vessels Engineered From Human Cells," The Lancet, (2005), 366, 9489; 891–892.
• Gong, Z., Niklason, L. "Small-Diameter Human Vessel Wall Engineered From Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells (hMSCs)," The FASEB Journal, (2008), 22:1635-1648.
• Petersen, T.H., Calle, E.A., Zhao, L., Lee, E.J., Gui, L., Raredon, M.B., Gavrilov, K., Yi, T., Zhuang, Z.W., Breuer, C., Herzog, E., Niklason, L.E. "Tissue-Engineered Lungs for In Vivo Implantation," Science, (2010), 329, 5991; 538–41.
• Dahl, S.L., Kypson, A.P., Lawson, J.H., Blum, J.L., Strader, J.T., Li, Y., Manson, R.J., Tente, W.E., DiBernardo, L., Hensley, M.T., Carter, R., Williams, T.P., Prichard, H.L., Dey, M.S., Begelman, K.G., Niklason L.E. "Readily Available Tissue-Engineered Vascular Grafts," Science Translational Medicine, (2011), 3, 68;68ra9.
• Quint, C., Kondo, Y., Manson, R.J., Lawson, J.H., Dardik, A., Niklason, L.E. Decellularized Tissue-Engineered Blood Vessel as an Arterial Conduit, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, (2011), 108, 22; 9214–9.
• Zhou, J., Niklason, L.E., "Microfluidic Artificial 'Vessels' for Dynamic Mechanical Stimulation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells," Integrative biology: quantitative biosciences from nano to macro, (2012), 4, 12; 1487–97.
• Ghaedi, M., Calle, E.A., Mendez, J.J., Gard, A.L., Balestrini, J., Booth, A., Bove, P.F., Gui, L., White, E.S., Niklason, L.E., "Human iPS Cell-Derived Alveolar Epithelium Repopulates Lung Extracellular Matrix," The Journal of Clinical Investigation, (2013), 123, 11; 4950–62.
• Mendez, J.J., Ghaedi, M., Sivarapatna, A., Dimitrievska, S., Shao, Z., Osuji, C.O., Steinbacher, D.M., Leffell, D.J., Niklason, L.E., "Mesenchymal Stromal Cells form Vascular Tubes When Placed in Fibrin Sealant and Accelerate Wound Healing In Vivo," Biomaterials, (2014).
• Raredon, M.S., Niklason, L.E., "A Call to Craft," Science Translational Medicine, (2014), 6(218):218fs1.