Laura Niklason

Laura Niklason was born in Evanston, Ill. She earned a B.S. in physics and a B.A. in biophysics from the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign campus) in 1983. She holds an M.D. from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in biophysics from the University of Chicago. Niklason completed her medical training in anesthesiology and critical care medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1996.^[11]

Niklason was a faculty member at Duke University from 1998 to 2005.^[1] In 2004, Niklason along with Drs. Shannon Dahl and Juliana Blum, co-founded Humacyte, a company based in Durham, North Carolina, that is pioneering the development and manufacture of off-the-shelf, universally implantable, bioengineered human tissues to improve the lives of patients and transform the practice of medicine.^[2][12] In 2006, Niklason joined the faculty at the Yale School of Medicine, where she currently serves as an adjunct professor of anesthesia and biomedical engineering.^[13]

In 2010, Niklason and her colleagues were able to successfully produce an engineered rat lung that could inhale and exhale carbon dioxide.^[14] In 2013, Niklason along with Duke researcher Dr. Jeffery Lawson, developed a bioengineered blood vessel, which Lawson grafted into an artery in a Duke patient's arm.^[15]

In 2016, Niklason was named as the Nicholas M. Greene Professor of Anesthesiology and Biomedical Engineering at Yale.^[16] As part of a research team, Niklason conducted clinical trials into the effectiveness of giving patients experiencing kidney failure bioengineered blood vessels.^[17]

In 2020, Niklason was appointed CEO and president of Humacyte.^[18] During Niklason’s tenure, the company went public through a merger with Alpha Healthcare Acquisition Corp in 2021.^{[19][20][21][22]}

The Brady W. Dougan and Laura E. Niklason House at University of Chicago was named for her.^[23]

Niklason is the recipient of multiple awards and honors, including:

• 2021: Named one of FiercePharma's 2021 Fiercest Women in Biotech.^[24]
• 2021: Winner of Triangle Business Journal 2021 Life Sciences Award. Award went to Humacyte, Inc., of which Niklason is the founder.^[25]
• 2020: National Academy of Engineering Member^[8]
• 2017: Named to Fortune's Digital Health Care Leaders list for her work in regenerative medicine.^[5]
• 2017: Cotlove Lectureship Award in Laboratory Medicine^[26]
• 2017: Inducted into Women in Technology Hall of Fame^[27]
• 2016: Named to 2016 Disruptor 50 Companies. Award went to Humacyte, Inc., of which Niklason is the founder.^[28]
• 2015: Winner of FierceMedicalDevices 2016 Fierce 15. Award went to Humacyte, Inc., of which Niklason is the founder.^[29]
• 2014: National Academy of Inventors Fellow^[6]
• 2011: Winner of Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Innovators Award for 2011, for development of "off-the-self" tissue engineered vascular graft to treat patients with vascular disease. Award went to Humacyte, Inc., of which Niklason is the founder.^[30]
• 2011: Winner of Frost & Sullivan Growth, Innovation & Leadership Award 2011, for development of engineered vascular graft. Award went to Humacyte, Inc., of which Niklason is founder.
• 2010: 50 best inventions of 2010 (engineered lung) Time^[4]
• 2008: College of Fellows, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)^[31]
• 2002: Beeson Physician Scholars Award, American Federation for Aging Research
• 2001: One of 21 U.S. News & World Report Innovators for 2001
• 2001: Hunt scholar, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University
• 2000: Discover magazine award for technological innovation (finalist in the health category)
• 2000: Selected by the National Academy of Engineering for Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering^[32]
• 1999: “Eminent Scientist of the Year,” International Research Promotion Council

Niklason is the co-author of more than 120 publications. A selected list follows:

• Niklason, L., Gao, J., Abbott, W.M., Hirschi, K.K., Houser, S., Marini, R., Langer, R. "Functional Arteries Grown in Vitro," Science, (1999), 5413, 489 – 493.
• Borel, C., McKee, A., Parra, A., Haglund, M., Solan, A., Prabhakar, V., Sheng, H., Warner, D., Niklason, L. "Possible Role for Vascular Cell Proliferation in Cerebral Vasospasm After Subarachnoid Hemorrhage," Stroke, (2003), 34:427-433.
• Poh, M., Boyer, M., Dahl, S., Pedrotty, D., Banik, S., McKee, J., Klinger, R., Counter, C., Niklason, L. "Blood Vessels Engineered From Human Cells," The Lancet, (2005), 366, 9489; 891–892.
• Gong, Z., Niklason, L. "Small-Diameter Human Vessel Wall Engineered From Bone Marrow-Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells (hMSCs)," The FASEB Journal, (2008), 22:1635-1648.
• Petersen, T.H., Calle, E.A., Zhao, L., Lee, E.J., Gui, L., Raredon, M.B., Gavrilov, K., Yi, T., Zhuang, Z.W., Breuer, C., Herzog, E., Niklason, L.E. "Tissue-Engineered Lungs for In Vivo Implantation," Science, (2010), 329, 5991; 538–41.
• Dahl, S.L., Kypson, A.P., Lawson, J.H., Blum, J.L., Strader, J.T., Li, Y., Manson, R.J., Tente, W.E., DiBernardo, L., Hensley, M.T., Carter, R., Williams, T.P., Prichard, H.L., Dey, M.S., Begelman, K.G., Niklason L.E. "Readily Available Tissue-Engineered Vascular Grafts," Science Translational Medicine, (2011), 3, 68;68ra9.
• Quint, C., Kondo, Y., Manson, R.J., Lawson, J.H., Dardik, A., Niklason, L.E. Decellularized Tissue-Engineered Blood Vessel as an Arterial Conduit, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, (2011), 108, 22; 9214–9.
• Zhou, J., Niklason, L.E., "Microfluidic Artificial 'Vessels' for Dynamic Mechanical Stimulation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells," Integrative biology: quantitative biosciences from nano to macro, (2012), 4, 12; 1487–97.
• Ghaedi, M., Calle, E.A., Mendez, J.J., Gard, A.L., Balestrini, J., Booth, A., Bove, P.F., Gui, L., White, E.S., Niklason, L.E., "Human iPS Cell-Derived Alveolar Epithelium Repopulates Lung Extracellular Matrix," The Journal of Clinical Investigation, (2013), 123, 11; 4950–62.
• Mendez, J.J., Ghaedi, M., Sivarapatna, A., Dimitrievska, S., Shao, Z., Osuji, C.O., Steinbacher, D.M., Leffell, D.J., Niklason, L.E., "Mesenchymal Stromal Cells form Vascular Tubes When Placed in Fibrin Sealant and Accelerate Wound Healing In Vivo," Biomaterials, (2014).
• Raredon, M.S., Niklason, L.E., "A Call to Craft," Science Translational Medicine, (2014), 6(218):218fs1.
• Gutowski, P., Gage, S.m., Guziewicz, M., Ilzecki, M. Kazimierczak, A., Kirkton, R.D., Niklason, L.E., Pilgrim, A., Prichard, H.L., Przywara, S., Samad, R., Tente, B., Turek, J., Witkiewicz, W., Zapotoczny, N., Zubilewicz, T., Lawson, J.H., "Arterial reconstruction with human bioengineered acellular blood vessels in patients with peripheral arterial disease," Journal of Vascular Surgery, (2020), 72(4):1247-1258.
• Niklason, L.E., Lawson, J.H., "Bioengineered human blood vessels," Science, (2020), 9;370(6513):eaaw8682.