Dr. Neva Ciftcioglu

Born in Turkey, Neva Ciftcioglu, Ph.D. is codiscoverer and a principal researcher of Calcifying Nano Particles (CNP) formerly known as Nanobacteria with Dr. E. Olavi Kajander. She has been director of science at Nanobac Pharmaceuticals since 2004. Drs. Ciftcioglu and Kajander are regarded as the world’s experts in CNP research. While her early work centered on general infectious diseases and bacterial pathogenicity, her recent area of interest is in biological characterization and pathogenicity of CNP. She has been performing this research at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston/TX since 2001.
 
Neva holds an undergraduate degree from Kocatepe Mimar Kemal School in Ankara, Turkey and both a master’s degree and a doctorate degree in microbiology from the University of Ankara, Faculty of Medicine. She served as a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Kuopio and received her “docent/professor” title on Biotechnical Microbiology in the same faculty in 2000.
 
Her work has been recognized through a number of scientific awards from Finnish Scientific Societies and Academies, Turkish Research Institutions and from NASA Johnson Space Center. She has authored or coauthored 60 scientific publications and 50 scientific abstract communications, and 10 book chapters. She is a professional member of NASA Astrobiology Institute, the American Society for Microbiology, the American Society for Cell Biology, The American Physiological Society, and Mineralogical Society of America. She lectures to professional societies and universities worldwide on the subject of nanobacteria/CNP.
 
Neva is also one of the scientists of The Planetary Society designing the LIFE mission (An experiment on the survivability of microorganisms during interplanetary transfer) for the Russian Phobos Space Mission which will take place on 2009. This project can be summarized as: The possibility that transpermia, the interplanetary transfer of microorganisms, may have played a role in the origins of terrestrial life, depends on the ability of microorganisms to survive the voyage. While it is unlikely that loose microbes could escape a planet’s gravity well or survive radiation and vacuum or entry through a planetary atmosphere, approximately one ton of Martian rock ejected via major impact events arrives on Earth each year in the form of meteorites.
 
Whether survival of active microbes or spores during the interplanetary transfer phase itself would be sufficient to allow for transpermia is unknown. To advance survivability knowledge to the level of 34 months in the interplanetary space environment, and thus in time range appropriate to the transpermia hypothesis, the Planetary Society and the Russian Space Agency are preparing an experiment known as LIFE (Living Interplanetary Flight Experiment), which would fly on the Russian Phobos Soil mission. This experiment is being done in collaboration with the Space Research Institute and the Institute of Microbiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Currently, the experiment is under formal consideration by NPO Lavochkin, the engineering organization building the spacecraft.
 
She coauthored Nanobacteria from blood, the smallest culturable autonomously replicating agent on Earth, Nanobacteria: An alternative mechanism for pathogenic intra- and extracellular calcification and stone formation, Nanobacteria as extremophiles, Endotoxin and nanobacteria in polycystic kidney disease, Extraordinary survival of nanobacteria under extreme conditions, Nanoforms: a new type of protein-associated mineralization, Radiolabeling and in vivo distribution of nanobacteria in rabbit, Are apatite nanoparticles safe?, and Nanobacteria: Fact or Fiction? Characteristics, Detection, and Medical Importance of Novel Self-Replicating, Calcifying Nanoparticles.
 
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