Kunal Baxi Kunal Baxi, Ph.D. Principal Scientist
Greater Boston, Massachusetts

Delivery is the bottleneck. I have spent six years widening it.

A Ph.D. scientist with six years in genetic medicine, spanning lipid nanoparticle formulation, lentiviral vector engineering, and the cell-based assays that tell you whether a cargo actually reached its target.

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100-fold Signal-to-noise gain on a biodistribution assay that saved a program
13 Peer-reviewed publications, two as first author
2 platforms Lipid nanoparticle and lentiviral delivery, both run at the bench
8+ Scientists, fellows, and students mentored or supervised

My expertise

Construct, carrier, readout.

Three threads run through my work: molecular biology and construct design, lipid nanoparticle formulation, and lentiviral vector engineering. I build the construct, formulate or produce the vehicle that carries it, and design the in vitro and in vivo readouts that show whether it reached the target cell and worked. Few scientists have run both delivery platforms hands-on, so I choose a modality on evidence rather than on whichever one my hands already know.

Two delivery routes into a cell Lipid nanoparticles and VSV-G pseudotyped lentiviral vectors both enter by endocytic uptake and both must leave the endosome. Lipid nanoparticles release cargo into the cytosol for transient expression. Lentiviral vectors fuse, release capsid, reverse transcribe, and integrate for stable transgene expression. Shared functional readouts are listed beneath. Lipid nanoparticle nucleic acid cargo Lentiviral vector VSV-G pseudotyped Endocytic uptake receptor mediated Endosome acidification, escape or fusion SHARED STEPS Cytosolic release no integration Transient cargo expression Capsid release reverse transcription Nuclear import and integration Stable transgene expression FUNCTIONAL READOUTS Uptake kinetics · endosomal colocalization · escape readouts · receptor density by flow · ddPCR biodistribution and copy number · AmpSeq editing
Both platforms converge on the same bottleneck. The particle has to get out of the endosome, and the assays that tell you whether it did are largely shared. Entry route shown for VSV-G pseudotyped vector.

What I bring

Three problems I solve well.

01

Cross-platform delivery perspective

Formulated and characterized mRNA lipid nanoparticles, and separately built lentiviral packaging and producer cell lines. The comparison informs how I pick a delivery modality for a given target cell.

02

Assays that rescue programs

Implemented droplet digital PCR for high-throughput lipid nanoparticle biodistribution and tropism, improving assay signal to noise 100-fold and establishing the readout that salvaged the program.

03

Design of experiments on formulation

Ran a full factorial design crossing microfluidic flow rate against lipid N/P ratio, reading out particle size, polydispersity index, encapsulation efficiency, and transfection, then correlated those attributes with potency.

Where I have worked

Two companies, one problem.

Emmune

Principal Scientist in Cambridge, Massachusetts, running formulation and cell-based assay work for a genetic medicine program, from microfluidic formulation through in vivo study design.

Intellia Therapeutics

Three years, first as a Scientist on vector biology and CRISPR screening, then as a Senior Scientist on delivery biology, working on lipid nanoparticle delivery into primary and immortalized cells.

My training was in molecular genetics and cancer biology. I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at UT Health San Antonio modeling rhabdomyosarcoma in zebrafish (Danio rerio), and a Ph.D. at the University of Saskatchewan studying how protein catabolism couples to lifespan and reproduction in Caenorhabditis elegans.

How I like to work

I am most productive splitting my time roughly half at the bench and half developing the scientists around me. I mentored a junior scientist at Intellia Therapeutics for a year, co-directed a junior scientist and co-mentored a process engineer at Emmune, and supervised graduate students, a clinical fellow, and summer students during my postdoctoral training.

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