Congratulations to Jim Andorko, who is the recipient of the Fischell Department of Bioengineering's 2016 Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award. The award, presented to one graduate student each year, recognizes exemplary research toward the dissertation project.  Jim is an American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) Graduate Fellow, the recipient of the Dean's Dissertation Fellowship, and has published 14 papers thus far. Read more about Jim on the team page.

Congrats Jim!

This weekend Prof. Jewell presented at the NanoDDS conference. NanoDDS is an annual gathering focused on next-generation delivery technologies that was filled with exciting science, discussion, and socializing. Thanks to Dr. Justin Hanes, Dr. Honggang Cui, and all of the organizers for the fantastic opportunity to highlight ongoing work in the Jewell lab.

​Next year the NanoDDS meeting will travel to the University of Michigan. See you there!

Our recent work on engineering lymph nodes for tolerance using biomaterials is featured on the Cell Press Blog. Follow the link to see the comic (but still sciencey) side behind some of our work....

Read more about CrossTalk - Cell.

The lab published a new paper today in on reprogramming the function of lymph nodes - tissues that coordinate immune function - to promote tolerance and combat tolerance. The study used a unique approach to deposit degradable polymer particles in lymph nodes, promoting regulatory cells that helps control inflammation in diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). Working in pre-clinical models of MS, the studies show that a single treatment can permanently reverse paralysis by promoting regulatory cells and reducing immune cell inflammation into the central nervous system.

Congratulations to all the authors on their work! The paper is open access and available online at Cell Reports. The authors are Lisa Tostanoski, Dr. Yu-Chieh Chiu, Joshua Gammon, Dr. Thomas Simon, James Andorko, Dr. Jonathan Bromberg, and Dr. Christopher M. Jewell (corresponding).

Click the link to read the press release.

Caption: Tostanoski et al. use local delivery of polymer depots to program the lymph node environment for tolerance. The cartoon shows T cells learning to become TREG (happy pupils) instead of inflammatory TH1 or TH17 (mischievous pupils) cells owing to the presence of tolerogenic particles. Targeted delivery during autoimmunity promotes systemic, myelin-specific tolerance that restrains inflammatory cells in the central nervous system and reverses paralysis. Concept: Chris Jewell, Rebekah Taylor. Artwork: Kelly Finan.

Congratulations to NSF Fellow Lisa Tostanoski whose ACS Nano paper is now available online. The work describes self-assembly of immune signals to create the first polyelectrolyte multilayers designed to promote immunological tolerance. The findings demonstrate a unique approach for creating tolerance by targeting inflammatory pathways (toll-like receptors) that have recently been discovered to be over-active during autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, and lupus. The ultimate goal is to enable treatments for autoimmune diseases that are more effective and specific. In this first study, we demonstrate that immune-polyelectrolyte multilayers (iPEMs) promote tolerance in cells from animals, rodent models of multiple sclerosis, and in samples from human multiple sclerosis patients. The project is a collaboration with Dr. Walter Royal at the Baltimore VA and is freely available through Open Access.  

Congratulations to all the authors on this new advance!