Raksha Devi

Postdoctoral Researcher @Krembil Brain Institute

Toronto, ON, CA

Project: Functional Assessment of MSC-Derived Mitochondria on Macrophages, Synovial Tissues,Joint-on-a-Chip, and In Vivo model• Performed MSCs expansion for three pilot studies in FBS-/+ to determine the better yield of mitochondria and provided to the collaborators to isolate mitochondria and transplant.• Routinely differentiating monocyte into macrophages and polarizing with late OA-synovial fluid.• Currently performing mitochondria transplant in macrophages with collaborators to determine the optimal number of mitochondria to see any significant difference in inflammatory cytokine, ROS production, and cartilage degradation enzymes.• Optimizing MSC expansion using bioreactor for higher yield.• Differentiated MSCs into chondrocytes and will use in JOC device after validation to determine the effects of mitochondria transplant• Testing mt with OA macrophages/cartilage/OA synovial fluid on cartilage on chip model• Working on JOC model to assess the key parameters.Project: Comparative Profiling of Peripheral Monocyte, iPSC, and ESC-Derived Macrophages for Osteoarthritis Immunomodulation• Compared cytokine-polarized peripheral human monocyte-derived macrophages to iMACs, macrophages differentiated from iPSCs, provided by collaborating US based company, Shoreline Biosciences in a single-cell culture and co-culture with OA- synovium fibroblast, cartilage and bone.• Optimized the method to differentiate CD43+ progenitor cells into primitive embryonic macrophages, CD43+ progenitor cells provided by Dr. Gorden Keller, compare it with iMACs and peripheral human monocyte-derived macrophages.• Further optimizing to fully equip the collaborating labs with differentiation method.• Initiated and facilitated the collaborations to establish the robust differentiation method.• Performed bone and cartilage extraction and RNA isolation from TKR patient tissue and OA-synovial fibroblast expansion.

Savitribai Phule Pune University

Junior Research Fellow

Mount Sinai hospital (Lunenfeld Tatenbaum Research Institute), Toronto

Postdoctoral Researcher

Banaras Hindu University

MSc.

NII - National Institute of Immunology

Doctor of Philosophy - PhD

Himachal Pradesh University

BSc