(214e) A View of Cancer Immunology through a Reaction Engineering Lens

The reactor plays a central role in chemical processes, where state variables are controlled to create a favorable landscape that encourages a desirable reactive outcome. Yet, despite our best intentions, the realities of reacting systems - like inferential uncertainty, heterogeneity, and non-ideal conditions - can limit our ability to achieve our goals. To combat these complexities, the reaction engineering community have improved analytical and analysis tools and redesigned reactors to mitigate their impact. In some regard, using the immune system to treat cancer has some of the same aims: creating favorable conditions that encourage a patient’s immune cells to attack and kill malignant cells. In this talk, I will discuss some techniques developed to overcome challenges in designing and operating chemical reactors and their analogies in engaging host immunity to control tumor growth, specifically related to identifying reaction networks.