NewsAug | 21 | 2025
Stanton Lab Shares Inspiring Vision for the Future of Neuroscience
A new member on the team at Mass General Brigham's Center for Genomic Medicine and Department of Neurology, Alice Stanton, PhD, is ready to hit the ground running. Dr. Stanton is committed to advancing precision medicine for the brain and is pursuing several lines of research aimed at transforming the pace and scope of therapeutic discovery.
“I’ve been working at the interface of neuroscience and engineering. My foundations are in chemical engineering and approaches where we can design new tools to be able to answer biological questions in new ways,” Dr. Stanton explains.
During her postdoctoral work at MIT, Dr. Stanton developed advanced mini-brain organoid platforms. These three-dimensional brain models allow scientists to study neurological disease mechanisms with greater accuracy by incorporating multiple cell types to more closely resemble the human brain.
Dr. Stanton says that while neurons carry a lot of the burden in neurological disease, other brain cell types, particularly glial cells, play critical roles in disease development and progression. Her work enables drug discovery and testing in personalized bioengineered human organoids that are vascularized, myelinated, and immune competent.
The Stanton lab aims to develop more advanced brain models and nanotechnology to address disease burden. The next step is to couple AI with these approaches to accelerate discovery.
Another major priority for Dr. Stanton is advancing strategies for drug delivery to the brain. She says the blood-brain barrier, which protects the brain from harmful substances in the bloodstream, poses a significant challenge for delivering effective treatments. Dr. Stanton’s group is developing novel approaches to overcome this barrier, ensuring that therapies not only reach the brain but also arrive at the precise locations where they are needed. This line of research holds promise for improving the treatment of a wide range of neurological conditions.
By combining cutting-edge brain models with genomic data, the lab seeks to tailor therapies to individual patients based on their genetic profiles. Dr. Stanton says she is excited by this ability to address the root causes of disease. “When you get down to not just the symptoms and not just the overall pathologies, but you get ahead of that curve, it’s just a really exciting opportunity to be able to have better outcomes for the patients. Then we’ll be able to push more towards preventative medicine.”