Jina Ko

About

Jina Ko, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. Her research expertise includes medical diagnostics, droplet microfluidics, biomarker discovery, and microfabrication. She is a member of several research centers and institutes, including the Institute on Aging, Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center, Abramson Cancer Center, Penn Institute for Immunology, Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Diseases, and the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry. Dr. Ko completed her B.S. at Rice University in 2013 and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. Her research focuses on developing advanced microfluidic platforms and nanotechnologies for applications such as extracellular vesicle analysis, drug delivery, intracellular sampling, and cell therapy optimization. Her work aims to enhance diagnostic techniques and therapeutic strategies through innovative microfabrication and omic technologies.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Biology
• Medicine
• Pathology
• Computational biology
• Cell biology
• Neuroscience

Selected publications

• COVID-19 diagnostics in context

  Science Translational Medicine · 2020-06-03 · 421 citations

  reviewOpen access

  The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted the need for different types of diagnostics, comparative validation of new tests, faster approval by federal agencies, and rapid production of test kits to meet global demands. In this Perspective, we discuss the utility and challenges of current diagnostics for COVID-19.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Proteomic and biological profiling of extracellular vesicles from Alzheimer's disease human brain tissues

  Alzheimer s & Dementia · 2020 · 189 citations

  INTRODUCTION: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) from human Alzheimer's disease (AD) biospecimens contain amyloid beta (Aβ) peptide and tau. While AD EVs are known to affect brain disease pathobiology, their biochemical and molecular characterizations remain ill defined. METHODS: EVs were isolated from the cortical gray matter of 20 AD and 18 control brains. Tau and Aβ levels were measured by immunoassay. Differentially expressed EV proteins were assessed by quantitative proteomics and machine learnin…

  DOI

• Patient-derived melanoma organoid models facilitate the assessment of immunotherapies

  EBioMedicine · 2023-05-23 · 81 citations

  articleOpen access

  BackgroundOnly a minority of melanoma patients experience durable responses to immunotherapies due to inter- and intra-tumoral heterogeneity in melanoma. As a result, there is a pressing need for suitable preclinical models to investigate resistance mechanisms and enhance treatment efficacy.MethodsHere, we report two different methods for generating melanoma patient-derived organoids (MPDOs), one is embedded in collagen gel, and the other is inlaid in Matrigel. MPDOs in Matrigel are used for ass…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Double Digital Assay for Single Extracellular Vesicle and Single Molecule Detection

  Advanced Science · 2023-10-06 · 42 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Extracellular vesicles (EVs) have emerged as a promising source of biomarkers for disease diagnosis. However, current diagnostic methods for EVs present formidable challenges, given the low expression levels of biomarkers carried by EV samples, as well as their complex physical and biological properties. Herein, a highly sensitive double digital assay is developed that allows for the absolute quantification of individual molecules from a single EV. Because the relative abundance of proteins is l…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Optimizing cell therapy by sorting cells with high extracellular vesicle secretion

  Nature Communications · 2024-06-07 · 35 citations

  articleOpen access

  Critical challenges remain in clinical translation of extracellular vesicle (EV)-based therapeutics due to the absence of methods to enrich cells with high EV secretion. Current cell sorting methods are limited to surface markers that are uncorrelated to EV secretion or therapeutic potential. Here, we utilize a nanovial technology for enrichment of millions of single cells based on EV secretion. This approach is applied to select mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) with high EV secretion as therapeuti…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Mapping Single Extracellular Vesicles to Parent Cells for Immunotherapy Monitoring

  NIH · $741k · 2022–2025

Frequent coauthors

• David Issadore

  University of Pennsylvania

  76 shared

• Ralph Weissleder

  Center for Systems Biology

  60 shared

• Erica L. Carpenter

  47 shared

• Stephanie S. Yee

  University of Pennsylvania

  38 shared

• Neha Bhagwat

  38 shared

• Taylor A. Black

  38 shared

• Ben Z. Stanger

  University of Pennsylvania

  38 shared

• Jonathan Carlson

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  36 shared

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