The social and political concerns around lung disease also intrigue her. “People think of the skin as your first defense, but I think it’s the lungs. The bioburden that lives in your lungs is a testament to what they’re combatting every day. And the architecture of the lung is just stunning!” she exclaims, urging a look at histology images she calls “gorgeous.”

Balestrini went on from WPI to postdoctoral work at the University of Toronto and then Yale, but the bond with her mentor remains strong. “Kris was the last person on the dance floor at my wedding,” she relates. He recalls the spirited, “friend-powered” wedding at her in-laws’ organic flower farm in Maine for a different reason. Minutes before the ceremony, clouds rolled in and the skies broke open—but there was no trace of stress or dismay. “They just broke out the drinks and started the reception early,” he says. When the rain stopped, the party moved outside, wiped down the chairs, and proceeded with the ceremony. “She doesn’t let anything get her down; she just keeps working at it, and that attitude makes a difference,” Billiar says. “Let me tell you, in lab things don’t work very often. Experiments fail all the time. That’s what makes the PhD worthwhile: The failures, and the problem solving required.”

Think Tank

At Draper, Balestrini serves as a senior member of the technical staff, but the organization’s matrix structure blurs hierarchies and boundaries in favor of fluid collaboration. She refers to the nonprofit as “a giant think tank—but we can design and build just about anything.” Primarily she’s building micro fluidic platforms for cells to live on while they are either being experimented on or modified for use as a therapeutic. “You can think of micro fluidics as ‘plumbing- on-a chip,’” she says. The goal is to recapitulate important aspects of the human body, allowing for precise manipulation of the many factors in the cell matrix that influence function. This provides researchers with a precision preclinical testing platform to create better, safer, and more efficient cell therapies for diseases ranging from cancer to sickle cell anemia, or even diabetes.

Every cell lives somewhere, and what’s happening in the neighborhood can be life-changing for a cell. “If we can understand how cells interpret who and where they are, we can use those same signals to manipulate certain cellular behaviors,” she explains. For example, the factors that make scars form and wounds heal could be exploited to grow tissue equivalents and replacement organs. Or cells from one’s own body could be reprogramed to fight diseases ranging from HIV or hepatitis to diabetes. She points out that her role isn’t to create these cures, but to build the tools that will allow Draper’s clients to make them. Part of the challenge is to come up with processes that eliminate the financial or processing “pain points” and make such customized therapies scalable and affordable.

In addition to the cell therapy work, Draper’s “organ on a chip” systems make it possible to efficiently run in vitro tests on a large number of cell samples in an environment that closely mimics the functions of the human body, including interactions between organs. With numerous “wells,” multiple compounds can be tested simultaneously, with real-time monitoring, before involving human subjects. Down the road, Balestrini projects, “You could test a sample from a person’s cancer in vitro to interrogate 20 different drugs and quickly figure out which ones would work best on that person.”

A current focus of her work— modifying cells using electroporation—might even make chemotherapy obsolete. She describes electroporation as “zapping” cells with electrical current to temporarily open tiny pores in the cell membrane, thus offering a brief window to introduce therapeutic components. “It makes it possible to ‘weaponize’ your own cells to fight your disease,” she says. She envisions a time when a patient could come in for a simple blood draw and leave after being re-injected with modified cells. “Electroporation allows us to impart altered genetic information across the cell membrane and into the cell. Once that’s integrated, it re-programs the cell to function in a way that could re- store function to a failing organ, for example, or target a particular cancer, based on the unique sig- nature from the patient’s tumor.”

Balestrini is looking forward to getting back to working on lung models again. Her voice lifts when she talks about it. “We’ve made lung models in the past, beautiful ciliated systems that are responsive to breathing, infection, or air ow. Typical in vitro lung models don’t have an immune system, but we can build in those components.” She is speechless for a moment, contemplating the prospect. “It’s the best organ. I’m always trying to get people to leave their organ of preference and come over to pulmonary work.”