Title: Nanoscale Approaches for Therapeutic Immune Modulation
Speaker: Prof. Ashish Kulkarni, Department of Chemical Engineering, UMass Amherst
Abstract: Immunotherapy has emerged as the new paradigm in the treatment of cancer. However, durable responses are observed in a limited patient population primarily due to a strong immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment that hampers efficient anti-tumor immune responses. For example, tumors are heavily infiltrated with tumor-associated macrophages, facilitating tumor progression, conferring resistance to chemotherapy, and directly and indirectly mounting an immune suppressive effect on T cells. I will present a nanotechnology-based approach called supramolecular nanotherapeutics, which can focally modulate the tumor immune contexture towards the immune responsive mode with minimal systemic side effects. We have observed that supramolecular nanotherapeutics can exert a sustained tumor regression in multiple immunocompetent syngeneic murine models by efficiently converting immunosuppressive tumor macrophages to effector macrophages.
