Niren Murthy

Niren Murthy is a professor of bioengineering at the University of California, Berkeley.^[1] His laboratory is focused on the development of new materials for drug delivery and molecular imaging.^[1]

Niren Murthy
Education	Ph.D
Occupation(s)	Co-founder, professor, and scientific advisor
Website	https://murthylab.berkeley.edu

Career

Murthy began his career at Georgia Tech in 2003 and moved to U.C. Berkeley in 2012.^{[citation needed]} He did postdoctoral research in the Chemistry department at U.C. Berkeley from 2001-2003 and received a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of Washington, Seattle in 2001.^{[citation needed]} He was an assistant professor at Georgia Institute of Technology, in Biomedical Engineering from 2003-2012.^[2]

Murthy is a co-founder and scientific advisor for Genedit Inc., the inventor of CRISPR-Gold and the scientific co-founder of Microbial Medical.^[3][4] In addition, BioAmp Diagnostics originated from technology developed in the Murthy laboratory.^[4]  Dr. Murthy was a recipient of the NSF Career award in 2006 and won the Society for Biomaterials Young Investigator award in 2009.^[1][5]

Laboratory

Murthy’s laboratory focuses on the development of molecular imaging and materials for drug delivery.^[3] The laboratory has developed new biomaterials and imaging agents, which are designed to improve the diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases.^{[citation needed]} Murthy laboratory has also developed reagents for detecting radical oxidants, like the hydrocyanines.^[5]

The Murthy laboratory has been recently focussed on developing gene editing delivery vehicles and developed CRISPR-Gold in 2017, which was a delivery vehicle that could induce homology-directed DNA repair.^{[3][6][7][8][9][10]}

Several new biomaterials and start-up companies have originated from the Murthy laboratory.^[4] The hydrocyanines were developed in the Murthy lab in 2009, and are now one of the most commonly used classes of ROS imaging probes.^[4] Hydrocyanines were licensed by Life Technologies and LI-COR Biosciences, and are sold under the trade-names Cell-Rox and ROSSTAR.^[4]