Christopher Jewell, PhD

Therapeutic vaccines could have a transformative impact on cancer therapy, but are currently hindered by inefficient expansion of the correct types of immune cells needed to migrate to tumors and destroy these tissues, while also establishing immune memory that prevents tumor relapse.  

The goal of this project is to locally engineer the microenvironment of lymph nodes – the tissues that control immunity – using controlled release vaccine depots. These depots are formulated with activating immune signals, cues to promote immune memory, and DNA encoding molecules commonly upregulated on cancer cells.  

Local delivery of these signals to lymph nodes could promote potent tumor immunity and long-lasting anti-tumor T cells. This work will shed new light on how the kinetics and concentrations of tumor vaccine components impact lymph node structure and function and support the development of a new class of cancer vaccines that could clear existing tumors and prevent new tumor growth.