Katharina Ribbeck

Katharina Ribbeck is a German-American biochemist and biophysicist. She is known for her work on mucus. She studies both the function of mucus as a barrier to viruses and other pathogens and the changes that cervical mucus undergoes before birth, which may lead to a novel diagnostic for risk of preterm birth. She is the Hyman Career Development Professor of Biological Engineering at MIT.
Education.
Ribbeck received her B.S. from the University of Heidelberg in 1998 and her Ph.D., also from the University of Heidelberg, in 2001.
Career.
During her Ph.D. work, Ribbeck investigated the selective transport of molecules through the nuclear pore complex, which is partly mediated by a hydrogel barrier. After post-doctoral research, she moved to Harvard University as an independent Bauer Fellow in 2007, where she began to investigate how particles move through mucin hydrogels. In 2010 she moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor.
Ribbeck has shown that purified foreign mucins can prevent viruses from infecting cells, and suggested that they could be used to supplement the anti-viral activity of native mucins. She has also shown that mucins prevent bacteria such as the pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Streptococcus mutans, the bacterium that causes tooth decay, from forming biofilms, which make them hard to eradicate. Mucins may also block fungal pathogens such as Candida albicans from becoming virulent in healthy humans. She has extensively investigated the biophysical properties of mucus and other hydrogels and the mechanisms by which some particles and molecules selectively pass through the barrier.
Ribbeck identified a correlation between the properties of the mucus in the cervix in pregnant women and the likelihood of preterm birth, and has developed probes to test mucus permeability as a step towards diagnosis of risk for premature birth. Additionally, Ribbeck was instrumental in founding the company ProMuc Inc., a company that develops synthetic mucins for lubrication and antimicrobial applications.
Ribbeck also studies hydrogels produced by pathogens, and has found that the extracellular matrix formed by the pathogenic bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa protects the bacterium against antibiotics.