"Biomaterials for cancer targeting and immunoengineering"
Immunotherapy has achieved significant clinical success in the past few years, but there remains tremendous room for the development of new-generation therapies with more robust and persistent immune responses. My research interests are largely directed towards understanding how cancer cells and immune cells can be manipulated or engineered using chemistry, material, and chemical biology approaches, in order to develop effective therapies for cancers, injured tissues, and other diseases. In this talk, I will start with my Ph.D. journey in exploring cancer-selective metabolic labeling and targeting, and then share how metabolic sugar labeling can be coupled with immune cell-homing biomaterials to achieve in vivo tracking and targeted modulation of immune cells. Lastly, I will talk about a biomaterial-based antigen-free cancer vaccine for the treatment of poorly-immunogenic solid tumors.
