Journal of Nanomedicine & Nanotechnology

Lee Josephson

Biography

Dr. Lee Josephson received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Wisconsin and his Ph.D. in chemical biology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.   He was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Guido Guidotti at Harvard University and a cofounder of AMAG Pharmaceuticals (AMAG, AMEX), where served as Chief Scientific Officer from and supervised the development of magnetic nanoparticles as FDA approved MR contrast agents. He joined the Center for Molecular Imaging Research at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1997 and was a cofounder of T2 Biosystems in 2006. Dr. Josephson’s interest in the design of magnetic materials for biomedical applications led to the initial patents and publications demonstrating that the combination of magnetic nanoparticles and T2 NMR detectors could yield improved tests for the clinical laboratory. He is currently an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, and a member of the Center for Advanced Molecular Imaging Sciences (CAMIS) and the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH. He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications and 30 issued US patents. He is a co-founder and consultant to T2 Biosystems, a company developing MR based assays and sensors. 

Research Interest

Dr.Lee’s  research focuses on the design and uses of magnetic nanoparticles, near infrared fluorescent (NIRF), and magneto/optical probes for a wide range of questions in biology, chemistry and physics. I have developed nanoparticles that are detectable by MRI and NIRF (magneto/optical probes), and demonstrated their use as pre-operative MR contrast agents and intra-operative optical probes in important clinical applications including lymph node delineation and brain tumor delineation. A second area he involved with is the development of annexin V based probes for imaging apoptosis, which plays a crucial in the pathology and treatment of disease. Annexin V is used to image the induction of apoptosis by chemotherapy, to predict long-term chemotherapeutic efficacy early in the course of treatment.