Symposium SM02-Immune Modulatory Materials—From Design to Translational Applications

With biomaterials increasingly used in therapeutic applications, understanding the interactions between materials and the host immune system provides crucial insight into materials design to achieve maximal desired therapeutic effect(s). To this end, significant progress has been made in the recent years towards developing biomaterials to: resist the foreign body response and camouflage nanoparticles to avoid immune recognition; to actively modulate cell phenotypes for enhanced tissue regeneration; to induce antigen-specific immune responses in a highly efficient manner; to overcome barriers to efficient and targeted drug delivery. This symposium will cover a broad array of topics from fundamental material-immune cell interactions to translational applications of materials in immunotherapy. Symposium attendees with broad science, engineering and biomedical expertise can expect to be exposed to state-of-the-art developments in this fast growing interdisciplinary area.

• Immune response to materials
• Stimulation of humoral and cellular immune responses with materials
• Immunomodulatory materials for inducing antigen-specific tolerance
• Immuno-modulatory materials in regenerative medicine
• Materials for immunotherapeutic drug delivery

• Edward Botchwey (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
• Lindsay Fitzpatrick (Queen's University, Canada)
• Jamal Lewis (University of California, Davis, USA)
• Steven Little (University of Pittsburgh, USA)
• Wendy Liu (University of California, Irvine, USA)
• Chad Mirkin (Northwestern University, USA)
• Nassir Mokarram (Duke University, USA)
• David Mooney (Harvard University, USA)
• Rebecca Pompano (University of Virginia, USA)
• Jai Rudra (University of Texas Medical Branch, USA)
• Ankur Singh (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
• Cherie Stabler (University of Florida, USA)
• Gregory Szeto (University of Maryland, USA)
• Li Tang (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland)
• Matt Tirrell (University of Chicago, USA)