Research Focus: Developing Microenvironments for NK cell Manufacturing

Adoptive immune cell therapy is an emerging therapeutic approach in the field of cancer immunotherapy that utilizes the strength of the human immune system against tumors. It has proven to be a promising method of treating various types of cancers. My research focuses on Natural Killer (NK) cells, which have promise for clinical use due to their endogenous function of surveilling the body for virally infected and cancerous cells. When translating this technology from the laboratory to the bedside, however, there is an unmet need in scalable NK cell manufacturing processes. Many current techniques are dependent on the use feeder cells, posing a challenge to clinical translation; alternatively, existing feeder-free approaches tend to have significantly limited growth rates. We hypothesize that developing biologically-relevant microenvironments for in vitro NK cell growth will improve yield and reliably produce high-quality NK cell products.