At the age of 12, Louis DeRidder encountered a medical crisis that almost claimed his life. This frightening ordeal provided him with an intimate perspective on healthcare, igniting his desire to delve deeper into the field.
“It’s often challenging to identify exactly what sparks your interest, yet that moment was a pivotal one,” DeRidder remarks.
During his high school years, he seized the opportunity to engage in a medicine-centered program, dedicating approximately half of his days in his senior year to studying medical science and shadowing physicians.
DeRidder became enthralled. He developed a keen interest in the technologies that enable treatments and was especially drawn to the mechanisms of drug delivery to the brain, a curiosity that ignited a lifelong enthusiasm.
“At 17, while still in high school, this issue captivated my attention, and even ten years later, I find it just as fascinating,” he notes. “That curiosity eventually led me to the field of drug delivery.”
His passions prompted him to transfer midway through his undergraduate education to Johns Hopkins University, where he conducted research proposed in a Goldwater Scholarship application. This research centered around developing a nanoparticle-drug conjugate aimed at delivering a medication to brain cells to convert them from a pro-inflammatory to an anti-inflammatory phenotype. Such technology could prove invaluable in treating neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.
In 2019, DeRidder joined the collaborative Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, where he initiated a unique drug delivery project — creating a device that measures the concentration of a chemotherapy agent in the bloodstream during administration and adjusts the infusion rate to ensure optimal levels for the patient. This system is referred to as CLAUDIA, or Closed-Loop Automated Drug Infusion Regulator, which allows for personalized drug dosing across various medications.
This project emerged from conversations with his faculty mentors — Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor, and Giovanni Traverso, the Karl Van Tassel Career Development Professor and a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. They informed him that chemotherapy dosing relies on a formula established in 1916, which estimates a patient’s body surface area. This formula fails to account for critical factors such as variations in body composition and metabolism, or circadian changes that can influence drug interactions within a patient.
“When my mentors outlined the actual method of chemotherapy dosing,” DeRidder reflects, “I thought, ‘This is outrageous. How is this considered acceptable in clinical practice?’”
He and his mentors concurred that this presented an excellent project opportunity for his PhD.
“Once they presented the problem to me, we started brainstorming ways to create a medical device aimed at enhancing patients’ lives,” DeRidder explains, adding, “I truly enjoy starting from a blank canvas and brainstorming to find the most effective solution.”
From the onset, DeRidder’s research process incorporated MATLAB and Simulink, developed by the software company MathWorks specializing in mathematical computing.
“MathWorks and Simulink play a crucial role in our work,” DeRidder states. “They allow us to model the pharmacokinetics of the drug — tracking how the body distributes and metabolizes it. We also model the various components of our system using their software. This was particularly vital in the initial stages, as it helped us determine whether controlling the drug concentration was feasible. Since then, we’ve continuously enhanced the control algorithm through these simulations. You can simulate hundreds of different scenarios before conducting any laboratory experiments.”
With his innovative application of MATLAB and Simulink, DeRidder received MathWorks fellowships for both the previous year and this year. Additionally, he has been honored with a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
“The fellowships have been essential in our development of the CLAUDIA drug-delivery system,” DeRidder shares, highlighting that he has “enjoyed collaborating with an outstanding group of students and researchers in the lab.”
He expresses a desire to advance CLAUDIA toward clinical application, believing it could create a substantial impact. “I’m interested in taking whatever steps are necessary to move it toward clinical use, including possibly starting a company to commercialize the system.”
In tandem with his work on CLAUDIA, DeRidder is also focusing on the creation of new nanoparticles for delivering therapeutic nucleic acids. This project consists of synthesizing novel nucleic acid molecules and developing innovative polymeric and lipid nanoparticles to ensure effective delivery to targeted tissues and cells.
DeRidder enjoys working on technologies across various scales, from medical devices to molecular structures — all with the potential to enhance medical practice.
Meanwhile, he manages to carve out time in his busy life for community service. For the last three years, he has dedicated his efforts to assisting the homeless on the streets of Boston.
“It’s easy to overlook the straightforward, tangible ways we can serve our communities while engaged in research,” DeRidder observes, “which is why I often look for opportunities to assist people I encounter daily, whether it’s a student I mentor in the lab, aiding the homeless, or helping a stranger in the store who’s having a rough day.”
Ultimately, DeRidder envisions returning to work that evokes his early encounters with the medical field in high school, where he interacted with numerous individuals suffering from dementia and other neurological illnesses at a nearby nursing home.
“My long-term ambitions involve developing devices and molecular therapies aimed at treating neurological disorders, along with continuing work on cancer,” he states. “Truly, I would say that early experience greatly influenced my career path.”