A key goal of our laboratory is to engineer enhanced immunity through the design of materials that control the immune response elicited by vaccines. We have focused in two main areas: (i) nanoparticle-based strategies to enhance subunit vaccines and (ii) development of technologies to control vaccine kinetics. Research in the latter area focuses on methods to control the timing with which the immune system is exposed to antigen and inflammatory cues during vaccination, and fundamental research into how vaccine kinetics impact the immune response. In collaborative efforts with faculty from the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard, we have applied these technologies toward the design of a vaccine for HIV, while with colleagues from the Koch Institute, we focus on using these approaches to enhance therapeutic cancer vaccines.

Edited: 1/18/2020