The behavior of cells and tissues and that of the whole organism is a unique combination of their genetic makeup and their microenvironment. The ability to effectively transfer genes into humans provides unique possibilities for the treatment of various diseases. Efficient expression of antigenic proteins in-vivo following gene delivery, can “train” our immune system to fight against incurable cancers and deadly infectious diseases. On the other hand rational manipulation of the microenvironment of stem and progenitor cells provides us with the opportunity to precisely control and manipulate their differentiation and develop unique approaches for cell-based therapeutics.

The overall goal of our research endeavor is the development of new biomaterial-based strategies for gene/drug delivery and stem cell engineering. Towards this, my laboratory focuses on three major directions: (a) design and development of novel delivery systems for nucleic-acid based immunotherapy and cancer chemotherapy (b) engineering complex microenvironments to study and manipulate stem cells and understand their behavior in biomimetic, three-dimensional conditions and (c) developing novel engineering tools and high throughput methods to generate functional T cells and Dendritic cells from stem cells.