Engineering the Future of Brain Medicine

Welcome to The Simic Lab

At the intersection of synthetic biology and neuroscience, we are pioneering a novel approach to understanding and treating brain diseases. Our lab harnesses the power of engineered cells as "living drugs" that can navigate to the brain, sense disease states, and deliver precise therapeutic interventions where they're needed most.

  • The central nervous system represents one of medicine's final frontiers. Brain diseases—from aggressive cancers like glioblastoma to neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's—remain among the most challenging to treat. Traditional drugs struggle to cross the blood-brain barrier and often lack the precision needed to target specific brain regions or disease states.

  • We believe the solution lies in programming cells themselves to become intelligent therapeutic agents. By engineering immune cells with synthetic biological circuits, we create "cellular GPS systems" that can navigate specifically to the brain, recognize disease-associated signals, and respond with tailored therapeutic payloads.

  • Brain-Targeted Cell Engineering
    Our technology platform uses binding triggered transcriptional switch synthetic receptors to create cells that can sense brain-specific antigens and respond by activating therapeutic programs. Think of it as programming cells with an "if-then" logic: if the cell detects a brain-specific signal, then it produces a therapeutic molecule.

    This approach provides unprecedented precision:

    • Anatomical specificity: Therapies are delivered only to the brain

    • Disease specificity: Cells can distinguish between healthy and diseased tissue

    • Temporal control: Therapeutic responses activate only when and where needed

  • Our work exemplifies translational science at its best. We've successfully moved our brain-targeted CAR-T cell therapy from laboratory concept to clinical reality, with a Phase I trial now underway for brain cancer patients and a second one coming in very soon at UCSF. This rapid translation demonstrates the power of synthetic biology to address unmet medical needs.