Macrophage-hitchhiking Anisotropic Microparticles for Therapeutic and Diagnostic Applications

Abstract

Cell therapies represent a major paradigm shift of biotechnology in medicine due to its transformative potential in treating previously incurable diseases. A variety of cells have been applied for cell therapies, including stem cells, tissue-specific cells, and hematopoietic cells. Particularly, immune cells, a subset of blood cells, have gained significant attention owing to their inflammation-homing ability as well as inherently critical roles in disease progression and tissue regeneration. The prosperity of immune cell-based therapies in the clinic has fueled the efforts in immune cell engineering. Several approaches have been taken to functionalize immune cells, among which biomaterial-assisted cellular platforms, marrying the strengths of biomaterials and leukocytes, become a new pillar of immune cell engineering. In my thesis work, I provide a brief overview on the cell therapies in the clinic, followed by introducing two projects of biomaterial-assisted cellular platforms, where anisotropic microparticles and macrophage, a type of innate immune cells, were employed. Specifically, I developed and engineered discoidal microparticles that can hitchhike on the macrophage surface but resist phagocytosis due to their anisotropic morphology. This approach takes advantage of inflammation-homing capability of macrophages and enables stable loading of therapeutic and imaging agents in the extracellular space for therapeutic and diagnostic applications.