(110b) Young Investigator Award - Nanotechnology As a Tool to Study and Direct Immune Function

Our research combines immunology and biomaterials to i) understand the interactions between synthetic materials and immune tissues, and ii) to design more selective therapeutic vaccines for cancer and autoimmunity. This presentation will highlight our most recent efforts integrating nanotechnology, primary cell culture, animal models, and samples from human patients. One example will discuss our work using quantum dots as tools to study how the combinations, densities, and concentrations of self-antigens control the development of immune tolerance. Understanding these parameters could inform design of new therapies for disease such as multiple sclerosis and type 1 diabetes. A second example will highlight a new approach to control inflammatory pathways that are over-expressed during autoimmune disease ("toll-like receptors") by self-assembling immune signals into nanostructured materials. These materials are simpler than traditional polymeric materials because they are build entirely from immune signals, but mimic attractive features of biomaterials such as co-delivery and cargo protection. Because these materials can selectively reduce disease-driven inflammation during mouse models of multiple sclerosis, they could contribute to efficacious therapies that avoid the immunosuppression plaguing existing human autoimmune therapies.