Gene Therapy, Sickle Cell Disease, Immunotherapy
B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Maryland-Baltimore County, 2024
Nelanne Bolima, a Cameroonian-American from Burtonsville, MD, earned her medical assistant license in high school where she discovered her passion for biomedical science through internships at Georgetown University. Motivated by her family's experiences with sickle cell anemia (SCA), she studied chemical engineering with a bioengineering focus at UMBC.
She conducted research on biodegradable mycelium-based plastics in Dr. Mark Marten’s lab and participated in a Purdue CISTAR REM program exploring CO₂ conversion into hydrofuels. Hope to seek better alignment with her gene therapy interests, she joined Duke’s PRIME PREP program, where she worked on CRISPR-dCas12-mediated gene expression for genome normalization in aneuploidy cells. Her PhD will focus on various delivery systems for gene and immunotherapies, aiming to advance treatments for genetic diseases.
Dr. John Tisdale (NHLBI) and
Prof. Marc de la Roche (Cambridge)