(437g) Invited Talk: Immune Engineering: Detection and Treatment of Undesired Immune Responses

Vaccines are the initial immunotherapy by providing a means to activate an immune response to specific antigens to protect against disease. This success has motivated the development of alternative immunotherapies for treating undesired immune responses, such as those found in autoimmune disease, allergy, organ transplantation, and cancer, with the objective to attenuate responses. For autoimmune and allergic disease, we have developed nanoparticles loaded with antigen or allergen, which suppresses the antigen specific response without impacting the remainder of the immune system. The nanoparticles maintain the antigen until internalization by immune cells, with subsequent presentation of the antigen coincident with down-regulation of the co-stimulatory factors and up-regulation of negative co-stimulators. Similar nanoparticles have been applied to attenuate inflammation, such as that associated with cancer progression. A critical need for treating undesired immune responses is the identification of disease prior to significant tissue damage, with disease such as Type 1 Diabetes, multiple sclerosis, or metastatic cancer often detected through patients self-reporting symptoms. We have developed scaffold implants that support the formation of tissues that function as an immunological niche to represent the immune function in endogenous tissues. The early detection and treatment of undesired immune responses provides an opportunity to ameliorate disease while preserving tissue function.