Dr. Enrica De Rosa is the Director of the Intravital Microscopy Core and the Laboratory Manager of the Nanomedicine Department, at the Houston Methodist Research Institute.
At the Universita' degli Studi di Napoli Federico II she earned her BS and MS in Chemical Engineering in 2001, and in 2004 her PhD in Chemical, Material and Production Engineering, specializing in Biomaterial and Transport Phenomena. During her awarded fully funded PhD scholarship she set up and validated an advanced microscopy technique (FRAP-Fluorescence Recovery After Photobleaching) to locally measure molecular diffusion for drug delivery and tissue engineering application. In 2007 she moved to Houston as senior postdoc in the Nanomedicine department of University of Texas, where she pioneered the development of an implantable subcutaneous nanodevice for long term constant drug delivery and of a weight bearing bio-nano-material able to regenerate the bone tissue in a critical size bone fracture. Her research led to the publication of many papers in well-known peer-reviewed journals. In April 2009 she was awarded the Heinlein Trust Microgravity Award to reward innovation in the use of microgravity to advance biotech, nanotech, combustion, metallurgy, and other fields. Since 2011 she has supported the Nanomedicine department research as Laboratory Manager at the Houston Methodist Research Institute and managed the Intravital Microscopy Core.
With her proficiency in live microscopy she was able to image and quantify drug delivery, targeting accumulation and vessel formation, in several organ and tissues, such as skin, liver, pancreas, brain, muscle, ear, intestine, lymphonodes. One of her recent works published on Nature Materials demonstrated that prototype porous silicon nanoneedles are a new more effective gene delivery method, able to induce 6 fold increase of blood vessel formation in vivo; paving the way for using this platform to successfully promote tissue regeneration and integration of new organs and implants.
In 2016 launched the Intravital Microscopy apparatus as core of the HMRI and under her leadership, research and financial experience the core can offer exceptional IVM services, with cutting edge IVM technology and image analysis tools at competitive prices.