Engineering the Macrophage Microenvironment for Immunomodulation

The host response to biomaterial implants remains a critical challenge for many medical devices.  Understanding this response and developing better biomaterials requires a multidisciplinary approach involving methods from materials engineering and biology.  Our laboratory combines microscale technologies with biomaterials engineering to control the physical and chemical properties of the cellular microenvironment.  We are interested in developing a better fundamental understanding of how material properties regulate macrophage function, and utilizing this knowledge to create improved materials for medical devices.   In this talk, I will describe two primary areas in which we are currently focused.  First, we are examining how physical features of the extracellular microenvironment, including adhesion geometry, topology and matrix composition, influence macrophage function and the wound healing response.  In a second approach, we are utilizing biomolecules expressed by host tissue to mask the biomaterial surface, and thus promote immune tolerance. Our ultimate goal is to create biomaterials that control local immune cells and mitigate the host response to implanted devices.