Much is known about immunity in health and disease, yet integration of this understanding with materials science for therapeutics delivery and diagnostics is lacking. Our laboratory focuses on this interface. We are developing nano and micro-biomaterials that interrogate immune system cell response and trafficking in the body or interface with those cells to induce localized and targeted activation or suppression of the immune response. We focus on a variety of applications ranging from in vitro and non-invasive in vivo detection, vaccine development, autoimmune and cancer immunotherapy.
We are driven by two objectives:
- The tunability of synthetic biomaterials can be exploited to design new therapeutics and diagnostics for modulation and detection of immune system cells.
- That cells of the immune system define rules for design of new materials for intervention in immunity.