About

Jina Ko, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. Her research expertise includes medical diagnostics, droplet microfluidics, biomarker discovery, and microfabrication. She is a member of several research centers and institutes, including the Institute on Aging, Penn Neurodegeneration Genomics Center, Abramson Cancer Center, Penn Institute for Immunology, Center for Molecular Studies in Digestive and Liver Diseases, and the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry. Dr. Ko completed her B.S. at Rice University in 2013 and earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. Her research focuses on developing advanced microfluidic platforms and nanotechnologies for applications such as extracellular vesicle analysis, drug delivery, intracellular sampling, and cell therapy optimization. Her work aims to enhance diagnostic techniques and therapeutic strategies through innovative microfabrication and omic technologies.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Biology
• Medicine
• Pathology
• Computational biology
• Cell biology
• Neuroscience

Selected publications

• Temporal and spatial omics technologies for 4D profiling

  Nature Methods · 2025-04-22 · 13 citations

  reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Droplet Squeeze Microfluidic Platform for Generating Extracellular Vesicle Hybrids for Drug Delivery

  Small · 2025-08-07 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are emerging as versatile drug delivery systems due to their intrinsic biocompatibility and targeting capabilities. However, EV integrity and efficient drug loading challenges hinder their clinical translation. To address these limitations, hybrid systems integrating lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) with EVs have gained attention for their potential in targeted and combinatorial drug delivery. This study presents a robust microfluidic approach for the scalable generation of drug-loaded EV-LNP hybrids (EV hybrids). The method facilitates controlled fusion between EVs and LNPs by utilizing a droplet-mediated squeezing mechanism. Lipid composition and microfluidic parameters are optimized for the fusion of EVs and LNPs and determined physicochemical and functional characterizations of the EV hybrids. In vitro studies demonstrate that EV hybrids exhibit enhanced targeting efficiency. Moreover, small-molecule therapeutics are successfully encapsulated within EV hybrids, significantly improving cytotoxic efficacy against melanoma in 2D and 3D culture models compared to drug-loaded EVs or LNPs alone. The work introduces a scalable, minimally disruptive microfluidic platform for engineering EV hybrids, offering a promising strategy to advance precision nanomedicine.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Vertically Aligned Nanowires for Longitudinal Intracellular Sampling

  ACS Nano · 2025-03-27 · 3 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding

  Cells are diverse systems with unique molecular profiles that support vital functions, such as energy production and nutrient absorption. Advances in omics have provided valuable insights into these cellular processes, but many of these tools rely on cell lysis, limiting the ability to track dynamic changes over time. To overcome this, methods for longitudinal profiling of living cells have emerged; however, challenges such as low throughput and genetic manipulation still need to be addressed. Nanomaterials, particularly nanowires, offer a promising solution due to their size, high aspect ratios, low cost, simplicity, and potential for high-throughput manufacturing. Here, we present a nanowire-based platform for longitudinal mRNA profiling in living cells using vertically aligned nickel nanowire arrays for efficient mRNA extraction with minimal cellular disruption. We demonstrate its ability to track enhanced green fluorescent protein expression and transcriptomic changes from drug responses in the same cells over time, showcasing the platform's potential for dynamic cellular analysis.

  PublisherDOI

• Advances in single extracellular vesicle characterization and multiplexed profiling

  TrAC Trends in Analytical Chemistry · 2025-12-01 · 5 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are nanoscale lipid bilayer particles that carry diverse molecular cargos and play essential roles in intercellular communication. However, their inherent heterogeneity and diversity present major challenges for bulk assays and conventional single EV profiling, as these approaches fail to identify rare subpopulations and the full molecular diversity, respectively. Advances in single EV characterization and multiplexed EV profiling technologies have begun to address these limitations, enabling precise, high-resolution analysis of individual vesicles. This review highlights recent developments in single EV characterization methods, including optical and mechanical approaches, and discusses multiplexed profiling platforms categorized into substrate-based, droplet-based, and solution-based strategies. These platforms integrate single EV partitioning with fluorescence and molecular coding schemes to achieve high-throughput and multidimensional biomarker analysis. We also outline four future perspectives for advancing multiplexed single EV profiling and facilitating its clinical application: 1) Integration of multi-omics in single EV profiling, 2) Multi-functional single EV profiling, 3) Rare and clinically relevant EV subpopulation analysis, 4) AI-driven data interpretation in multiplexed single EV analysis. • A comprehensive review of recent advances in the characterization of single extracellular vesicle (EV) and multiplexed single-EV analysis • Emphasis on the significance of multiplexed single-EV profiling in addressing EV heterogeneity • Focusing on the advanced multiplexed single-EV analysis, especially the integration of partitioning methods with multiplexing strategies • Discussion of current challenges and future perspectives for advancing multiplexed single-EV profiling toward clinical application

  PublisherDOI

• SPATIOTEMPORAL PROFILING OF THE TUMOR IMMUNE MICROENVIRONMENT

  2025-10-20

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Enhancing Chimeric Antigen Receptor T‐Cell Generation via Microfluidic Mechanoporation and Lipid Nanoparticles

  Small · 2025-03-19 · 13 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy has revolutionized cancer treatment by engineering patients' T cells to specifically target cancer cells. Traditional CAR-T cell manufacturing methods use viral transduction to integrate CAR genes into T cells, but this can cause severe side effects and immune reactions and is costly. To overcome these challenges, non-viral methods, such as plasmid DNA (pDNA) transfection, are being explored. Here, a high-throughput intracellular delivery platform that integrates microfluidic mechanoporation with lipid nanoparticle (LNP)-based delivery, LNP + Squeeze, is introduced. This system enhances pDNA transfection efficiency in T cells while maintaining cell viability compared to other non-viral transfection methods like electroporation. This platform successfully engineers CAR-T cells using primary human T cells with a high transfection efficiency and demonstrates potent cytotoxicity against melanoma cells. This approach offers a promising, cost-effective, and scalable alternative to viral methods, potentially improving the accessibility and efficacy of CAR-T cell therapies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Optimizing cell therapy by sorting cells with high extracellular vesicle secretion

  Nature Communications · 2024-06-07 · 35 citations

  articleOpen access

  Critical challenges remain in clinical translation of extracellular vesicle (EV)-based therapeutics due to the absence of methods to enrich cells with high EV secretion. Current cell sorting methods are limited to surface markers that are uncorrelated to EV secretion or therapeutic potential. Here, we utilize a nanovial technology for enrichment of millions of single cells based on EV secretion. This approach is applied to select mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) with high EV secretion as therapeutic cells for improving treatment. The selected MSCs exhibit distinct transcriptional profiles associated with EV biogenesis and vascular regeneration and maintain high levels of EV secretion after sorting and regrowth. In a mouse model of myocardial infarction, treatment with high-secreting MSCs improves heart functions compared to treatment with low-secreting MSCs. These findings highlight the therapeutic importance of EV secretion in regenerative cell therapies and suggest that selecting cells based on EV secretion could enhance therapeutic efficacy.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Programmed Death Ligand-1 in Melanoma and Extracellular Vesicles Promotes Local and Regional Immune Suppression through M2-like Macrophage Polarization

  American Journal Of Pathology · 2024-10-30 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Stochastic model of extracellular vesicle-mediated immunosuppression implicates importance of biophysical parameters in T cell signaling

  Biophysical Journal · 2024-02-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Alternative Pathway Complement Activation and Low Circulating Inhibitors Associate With Severity and Mortality in COVID-19 and Non-COVID Sepsis

  2024-04-30

  article
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Mapping Single Extracellular Vesicles to Parent Cells for Immunotherapy Monitoring

  NIH · $741k · 2022–2025

Frequent coauthors

• David Issadore

  University of Pennsylvania

  76 shared

• Ralph Weissleder

  Center for Systems Biology

  60 shared

• Erica L. Carpenter

  47 shared

• Stephanie S. Yee

  University of Pennsylvania

  38 shared

• Neha Bhagwat

  38 shared

• Taylor A. Black

  38 shared

• Ben Z. Stanger

  University of Pennsylvania

  38 shared

• Jonathan Carlson

  Massachusetts General Hospital

  36 shared