title: Biomaterial Strategies for Immunomodulation.
abstract: Strategies to enhance, suppress, or qualitatively shape the immune response are of importance for diverse biomedical applications, such as the development of new vaccines, treatments for autoimmune diseases and allergies, strategies for regenerative medicine, and immunotherapies for cancer. However, the intricate cellular and molecular signals regulating the immune system are major hurdles to predictably manipulating the immune response and developing safe and effective therapies. To meet this challenge, biomaterials are being developed that control how, where, and when immune cells are stimulated in vivo, and that can finely control their differentiation in vitro. We review recent advances in the field of biomaterials for immunomodulation, focusing particularly on designing biomaterials to provide controlled immunostimulation, targeting drugs and vaccines to lymphoid organs, and serving as scaffolds to organize immune cells and emulate lymphoid tissues. These ongoing efforts highlight the many ways in which biomaterials can be brought to bear to engineer the immune system.
authors.affiliation: Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine.|Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences, and.
authors.forename: Nathan A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Hotaling
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering.|Department of Biological Engineering, and.|Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139; email: djirvine@mit.edu.|The Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139.
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering.|Department of Biological Engineering, and.|Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139; email: djirvine@mit.edu.|The Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139.|Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chevy Chase, Maryland 20815.
authors.forename: Darrell J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Irvine
authors.affiliation: Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University School of Medicine.|Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences, and.|Center for Immunoengineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332; email: julia.babensee@bme.gatech.edu.
authors.forename: Julia E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Babensee
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000938:Antigen-Presenting Cells / Q000276:immunology; D058045:Artificial Cells / Q000276:immunology; D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D001698:Biomedical Engineering; D003713:Dendritic Cells / Q000276:immunology; D006801:Humans; D007114:Immunization; D007155:Immunologic Factors / Q000008:administration & dosage; D056747:Immunomodulation; D007167:Immunotherapy; D008221:Lymphoid Tissue / Q000276:immunology; D053758:Nanoparticles; D036103:Nanotechnology; D011506:Proteins / Q000276:immunology; D049490:Systems Biology; D023822:Tissue Engineering
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D007155:Immunologic Factors; D011506:Proteins
keywords: immunoengineering; immunotherapy; vaccination