Brian Belardi

About

Brian Belardi is an Assistant Professor in the McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He serves on the Graduate Studies Committee for both the Interdisciplinary Life Sciences and the Department of Chemistry. Dr. Belardi completed his Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was mentored by Professor Carolyn Bertozzi. He also conducted postdoctoral research as an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow in Bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley under the mentorship of Professor Daniel Fletcher. Prior to his graduate studies, he earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University, working with Professor Krzysztof Matyjaszewski.

Research topics

• Biology
• Cell biology
• Biochemistry
• Biophysics
• Chemistry

Selected publications

• Storming the gate: New approaches for targeting the dynamic tight junction for improved drug delivery

  Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews · 2023-06-02 · 39 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Light-Activated Assembly of Connexon Nanopores in Synthetic Cells

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2023-02-01 · 20 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  During developmental processes and wound healing, activation of living cells occurs with spatiotemporal precision and leads to rapid release of soluble molecular signals, allowing communication and coordination between neighbors. Nonliving systems capable of similar responsive release hold great promise for information transfer in materials and site-specific drug delivery. One nonliving system that offers a tunable platform for programming release is synthetic cells. Encased in a lipid bilayer s…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Steric pressure between glycosylated transmembrane proteins inhibits internalization by endocytosis

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2023-04-06 · 20 citations

  articleOpen access

  Clathrin-mediated endocytosis is essential for the removal of transmembrane proteins from the plasma membrane in all eukaryotic cells. Many transmembrane proteins are glycosylated. These proteins collectively comprise the glycocalyx, a sugar-rich layer at the cell surface, which is responsible for intercellular adhesion and recognition. Previous work has suggested that glycosylation of transmembrane proteins reduces their removal from the plasma membrane by endocytosis. However, the mechanism re…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Engineering Tissue-Scale Properties with Synthetic Cells: Forging One from Many

  ACS Synthetic Biology · 2023-07-07 · 16 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  In metazoans, living cells achieve capabilities beyond individual cell functionality by assembling into multicellular tissue structures. These higher-order structures represent dynamic, heterogeneous, and responsive systems that have evolved to regenerate and coordinate their actions over large distances. Recent advances in constructing micrometer-sized vesicles, or synthetic cells, now point to a future where construction of synthetic tissue can be pursued, a boon to pressing material needs in…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Extracellular Electron Transfer Enables Cellular Control of Cu(I)-Catalyzed Alkyne–Azide Cycloaddition

  ACS Central Science · 2022-01-14 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access

  can act as a dynamically tunable biocatalyst in complex environments. In summary, our results demonstrate how EET can expand the reaction scope available to living systems by enabling cellular control of CuAAC.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Synthetic Adhesome Cells: Engineering Interfaces Between Synthetic and Live Cells for Controlled Delivery

  NSF · $1.5M · 2022–2026

• Investigating Tight Junction-Mediated Spatial Organization in Polarized Epithelia.

  NIH · $163k · 2015–2018

• A Molecular Toolkit for Controlling and Probing Cell Junction-Actin Interactions

  NIH · $1.9M · 2021–2027

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel A. Fletcher

  Berkeley College

  31 shared

• Carolyn R. Bertozzi

  Stanford University

  22 shared

• Krzysztof Matyjaszewski

  Carnegie Mellon University

  10 shared

• Geoff P. O’Donoghue

  University of California, San Francisco

  9 shared

• Adam W. Smith

  Texas Tech University

  9 shared

• Lorraine Tessier

  CEA Paris-Saclay

  9 shared

• Jay T. Groves

  University of California, Berkeley

  9 shared

• François Stoffelbach

  Institut Parisien de Chimie Moléculaire

  9 shared

Labs

• Belardi LabPI

Education

• B.S.

  Carnegie Mellon University

  2008

• Ph.D., Chemistry

  University of California, Berkeley

  2014

• Other, Bioengineering

  University of California, Berkeley

  2014

Awards & honors

• David and Lucile Packard Foundation Packard Fellowship for S…
• Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews Emerging Voices in Drug Deliv…
• Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award – National Institut…
• Postdoctoral Association Award – University of California, B…
• Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Fellowship – National Institutes of…

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