Blanka Sharma has a PhD from Johns Hopkins in Biomedical Engineering and did her postdoctoral work at Cleveland Clinic. She is Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at UF. Dr. Sharma’s research investigates fundamental material-cell interactions at multiple length scales to guide the development of targeted drug and cell delivery systems for applications in both regenerative medicine and cancer. At this intersection lies the dysfunctional inflammatory mechanisms that propagate tumor development as well as degenerative diseases like osteoarthritis. Dr Sharma’s research seeks to understand the role of specific immune cells and inflammatory mechanisms in tissue pathology and develop therapeutic approaches to direct inflammatory mechanisms in a site-specific manner. For a given application, her group engineers biomaterials to enable therapeutic cells or molecules to overcome specific physiological barriers so they can successfully reach their tissue target.

Dr. Sharma has been recognized for excellence through the UF Pramod P. Khargonekar Junior Faculty Award of Excellence (2019-2020), National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2019), UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) Junior Faculty Award (2017), and “20 under 40” Outstanding Young Faculty by the American Society for Engineering Education (featured on cover of ASEE’s Sept issue of PRISM magazine, 2014).

View Dr. Sharma’s publication history on Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gQiXt_wAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)

• Manufacturing of natural killer cells for treating solid malignancies. MN Temples, B Sharma - Journal of Immunology and Regenerative Medicine, 2020

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• Magnetically Responsive Polymeric Microparticles for the Triggered Delivery of a Complex Mixture of Human Placental Proteins OL Lanier, JM Ficarrotta, I Adjei, D Wable, C Lewis, C Nacea, B Sharma, Jon Dobson, Peter McFetridge. Macromolecular Bioscience, 2020

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• Two-year follow-up and remodeling kinetics of chonDux hydrogel for full-thickness cartilage defect repair in the knee. MT Wolf, H Zhang, B Sharma, NA Marcus, U Pietzner, S Fickert,GH Robert Albers, Jennifer H Elisseeff. Cartilage 11 (4), 447-457, 2020

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• Leveraging Electrostatic Interactions for Drug Delivery to the Joint. S Kumar, B Sharma. Bioelectricity 2 (2), 82-100, 2020

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• Functional recovery of natural killer cell activity by nanoparticle‐mediated delivery of transforming growth factor beta 2 small interfering RNA. IM Adjei, J Jordan, N Tu, TL Trinh, W Kandell, S Wei, B Sharma. Journal of Interdisciplinary Nanomedicine 4 (4), 98-112, 2019

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• Multifunctional nanoparticles for intracellular drug delivery and photoacoustic imaging of mesenchymal stem cells.IM Adjei, H Yang, G Plumton, L Maldonado-Camargo, J Dobson, Carlos Rinaldi, Huabei Jiang, Blanka Sharma. Drug delivery and translational research 9 (3), 652-666, 2019

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• Lentiviral-based reporter constructs for profiling chondrogenic activity in primary equine cell populations. A Martin-Pena, RM Porter, G Plumton, TM McCarrel, AJ Morton, MV Guijarro, SC Ghivizzani, B Sharma, GD Palmer. European cells & materials 36, 156, 2018

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• Inhibition of bone loss with surface-modulated, drug-loaded nanoparticles in an intraosseous model of prostate cancer. IM Adjei, B Sharma, C Peetla, V Labhasetwar. Journal of Controlled Release 232, 83-92, 2016

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• Multifunctional nanoparticles for improving function and multimodal tracking of mesenchymal stem cells for osteoarthritis treatment. IM Adjei, H Yang, L Maldonado-Camargo, J Dobson, C Rinaldi, H Jiang, B Sharma. Osteoarthritis and Cartilage 24, S462-S463, 2016

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• Progress in orthopedic biomaterials and drug delivery. B Sharma, S Varghese. Drug delivery and translational research 6 (2), 75-76, 2016