Milos Simic is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Molecular Engineering in the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering.
Simic is a synthetic immunologist developing cell-based delivery platforms for brain diseases. His research focuses on combining cell engineering and synthetic biology to understand and treat brain diseases. Simic and his colleagues pioneered the concept of a programmable “tissue GPS” for cells, allowing a cell to precisely know where it is in the body to locally execute a predefined program. This concept is currently being applied for the treatment of brain cancers, with a potential clinical trial underway, as well as the treatment of neuroinflammation. Simic is eager to expand those concepts to treat other diseases of the brain, including neurodegeneration.
Simic began studying protein homeostasis during his undergraduate work, then explored manipulating cell fate through protein homeostasis during his doctoral work in Dr. Andrew Dillin's lab at the University of California, Berkeley. He subsequently transitioned to engineering new functions in cells to treat CNS disorders in Dr. Wendell Lim's lab at University of California, San Francisco, focusing on brain cancers and neuro-immunological disorders.
He earned his Master's in genetics from the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, and the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris. Simic specialized in cellular and molecular genetics through advanced coursework at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. During his genetics Master's program, he utilized C. elegans to study aging and proteostasis at both the Prof. Morimoto laboratory at Northwestern University and the Prof. Dillin laboratory. In addition, Simic earned a Master's in knowledge management from the University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris.
Simic received a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society before becoming a Cell Design Institute Fellow at UCSF. More recently, he was awarded the Neubauer Family Assistant Professorship.