Jian Lin, B.S.
Graduate Research Assistant
Office: BME 5.416
linjian@mail.utexas.edu

Research Focus: Bioengineering Functional Antigen-Specific T Cells

Current methods of T cell immunotherapy are severely constrained by the difficulties and inefficiencies of patient cell isolation as well as the limited availability of donor cells. To address these limitations, my goal is to develop an artificial T cell development niche for in vitro or ex vivo generation of functional antigen-specific T cells. We hypothesize that by providing scalable, microbeads based artificial MHC/TCR signaling supplemented with appropriate soluble factors, lineage committed immature thymic T cells or embryonic stem (ES) cell derived early T cells could be efficiently directed into antigen-specific mature T cells suitable for adoptive transfer in immunotherapy. The use of ES cells can provide us an easily expandable thus readily available cell source. The recently established OP9-DL1 system for driving ES cells hematopoietic differentiation into early T cells in vitro will greatly facilitate my research.