Jeffrey Capadona, PhD

Research Training Summary: 
Capadona’s expertise is developing bio-inspired and biomimetic materials to interface with biological systems. His doctoral research under Professors Andrés García and David Collard at Georgia Institute for Technology focused on the chemical and biological modifications to the surface of biomaterials and the evaluation of cell-material interactions. His postdoctoral training at Case Western Reserve University under Professors Christoph Weder, Dustin Tyler, and Stuart Rowan focused on developing innovative biomaterials for intracortical microelectrodes. His post-doctoral research culminated with first author publications in both Science and Nature Nanothechnology (cover). As a result, Capadona was recognized in 2011 by President Obama as one of the most promising early career scientists and engineers for his work in developing biocompatible biomaterials for neural implants. The Capadona Lab remains at the forefront of research into materials-based solutions to overcome the barriers to intimately integrated neural interfaces. They are interested in developing materials that seamlessly assimilate within neural tissue to facilitate molecular-level connections with individual neurons by mediating the inflammatory response and interacting with the normal cellular machinery. Their research uniquely provides a crucial element to focus on materials-based solutions for neural interfacing and rehabilitation, intracortical microelectrode recordings in rodents, and advanced multi-omic techniques to study neuroinflammation.

Research Summary: 
The Capadona Lab is dedicated to understanding and mitigating the neuroinflammatory response to implanted devices within the central nervous system. Neural devices range in material type, size, architecture, function, and placement.  Regardless of any of these variables, the neuroinflammatory response to the implant plays a significant role on the integrity of the healthy tissue and the longevity of device. Therefore, a major portion of Capadona’s work has focused on studying various aspects of intracortical microelectrode performance and pursuing both materials-based and therapeutic-based methods to mitigate the inflammatory-mediated intracortical microelectrode failure mechanisms. Examples include roles of tissue/device mechanical mismatch, oxidative stress, specific immunity pathways, and changes in the gut-derived microbiome in mediating neuroinflammation and device performance. Without a realization of a complete understanding of how the host-response to neural interfaces leads to device failure, and the development of strategies to mitigate the response, neural interfaces will never reach full clinical potential.  The Capadona Lab is working with clinicians to understand the real-world failure mechanisms and to correlate preclinical models with clinical results to best develop and translate or developments.