Mechanical Immunoengineering of T cells for Therapeutic Applications.

T cells, a key component in adaptive immunity, are central to many immunotherapeutic modalities aimed at treating various diseases including cancer, infectious diseases, and autoimmune disorders. The past decade has witnessed tremendous progress in immunotherapy, which aims at activation or suppression of the immune responses for disease treatments. Most strikingly, cancer immunotherapy has led to curative responses in a fraction of patients with relapsed or refractory cancers.

Injectable PEG/polyester thermogel: A new liquid embolization agent for temporary vascular interventional therapy.

Injectable poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)/polyester thermogels exhibit superior injectability and unique thermoreversible sol-gel transitions compared with Onyx™, which is the only liquid embolic agent approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Surgery-free injectable macroscale biomaterials for local cancer immunotherapy.

Immunotherapy can harness the power of host's immune system to fight cancer. In the last few decades, tremendous progress has been made in this field, with remarkable clinical successes achieved consisting of a durable response in a fraction of patients. However, there are enormous challenges to extending this therapy to the majority of cancer patients while retaining minimal adverse effects.

Neoantigen Vaccine Delivery for Personalized Anticancer Immunotherapy.

Cancer neoantigens derived from random somatic mutations in tumor tissue represent an attractive type of targets for the cancer immunotherapies including cancer vaccine. Vaccination against the tumor-specific neoantigens minimizes the potential induction of central and peripheral tolerance as well as the risk of autoimmunity. Neoantigen-based cancer vaccines have recently showed marked therapeutic potential in both preclinical and early-phase clinical studies.

Non-invasive monitoring of in vivo degradation of a radiopaque thermoreversible hydrogel and its efficacy in preventing post-operative adhesions.

Unlabelled: In vivo behavior of hydrogel-based biomaterials is very important for rational design of hydrogels for various biomedical applications. Herein, we developed a facile method for in situ fabrication of radiopaque hydrogel. An iodinated functional diblock copolymer of poly(ethylene glycol) and aliphatic polyester was first synthesized by coupling the hydroxyl end of the diblock copolymer with 2,3,5-triiodobenzoic acid (TIB) and then a radiopaque thermoreversible hydrogel was obtained by mixing it with the virgin diblock copolymer.

Functional biomedical hydrogels for in vivo imaging.

Hydrogels have gained tremendous attention owing to their great potential in biomedical applications such as tissue engineering and drug delivery. Their in vivo fate like in vivo degradation serves as a crucial factor in achieving the desired efficacy. Traditional anatomic observation has been used to investigate the in vivo degradation of hydrogels; however, invasive assessment at each time point significantly increases the number of animals needed for each experiment and is not able to monitor the same formulation throughout the whole period.

Injectable and Thermosensitive Hydrogel Containing Liraglutide as a Long-Acting Antidiabetic System.

Diabetes, a global epidemic, has become a serious threat to public health. The present study is aimed at constructing an injectable thermosensitive PEG-polyester hydrogel formulation of liraglutide (Lira), a "smart" antidiabetic polypeptide, in the long-acting treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus. A total of three thermosensitive poly(ε-caprolactone-co-glycolic acid)-poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(ε-caprolactone-co-glycolic acid) (PCGA-PEG-PCGA) triblock copolymers with similar molecular weights but different ε-caprolactone-to-glycolide (CL-to-GA) ratios were synthesized.

An injectable thermogel with high radiopacity.

An injectable PEG/polyester thermogel with strong X-ray opacity was designed and synthesized through the conjugation of 2,3,5-triiodobenzoic acid to the hydrophobic end of the mPEG-PLA diblock copolymer for the first time.