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Designing Stiffness-Tunable Polyacrylamide Hydrogels to Enhance CAR-Macrophage Manufacturing and Performance
- Program: Materials Science and Engineering
- Course: EN.510.439 Biomaterials Senior Design II
- Year: 2026
Project Description:
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, yet there are still many issues with existing therapeutics such as drug resistance and cancer relapse. Immunotherapy has emerged as a novel therapeutic that harnesses the body’s own immune system against cancers, yet most are limited to blood cancers. Chimeric antigen receptor macrophage (CAR-M) is a promising immunotherapy against solid tumors, due to macrophages’ ability to better infiltrate the tumor microenvironment; however, there are issues with efficacy and manufacturing that limit its clinical translation. The objective of this project is to design a process that will enhance CAR-M manufacturing and performance by using stiffness-tunable polyacrylamide hydrogels as culture substrates to provide desired biophysical cues to the engineered macrophages.
Project Photo:
CAR-Macrophage Phagocytosing Cancer Cells
