Natalie K Livingston, John W Hickey, Hajin Sim, Sebastian F Salathe, Joseph Choy, Jiayuan Kong, Aliyah B Silver, Jessica L Stelzel, Mary O Omotoso, Shuyi Li, Worarat Chaisawangwong, Sayantika Roy, Emily C Ariail, Mara R Lanis, Pratibha Pradeep, Joan Glick Bieler, Savannah Est Witte, Elissa Leonard, Joshua C Doloff, Jamie B Spangler, Hai-Quan Mao, Jonathan P Schneck
T cells are a critical mediator of antigen-specific immune responses and are common targets for engineering anti-tumor immunotherapy. Biomaterials scaffolds have previously been used to stimulate antigen presenting cells to elicit antigen-specific immune responses; however, structural and molecular features that directly stimulate and expand naïve, endogenous, tumor-specific T cells in vivo have not been defined. Here, we create an artificial lymph node (aLN) matrix, which consists of an extracellular matrix hydrogel conjugated with peptide-loaded-MHC complex (Signal 1), the co-stimulatory signal anti-CD28 (Signal 2), and a tethered IL-2 (Signal 3), that can bypass challenges faced by other approaches to activate T cells in situ, such as vaccines...
February 15, 2024: Advanced Materials