Intellectual Merit. The proposal requests support for a workshop entitled: Nanotechnology in Immunotherapy and Immunodiagnostics. The workshop will be either organized at Yale University or in conjunction with the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) annual meeting in 2011 or 2012. The targeted audience for this workshop will include a diversity of talent ranging from chemists, material scientists, and engineers to immunologists and physicians. Areas to be covered include, immunotherapy, vaccines, toxicological impact of nanomaterials, sensors and imaging applications for detection of immune responses in vitro and in vivo.
Much is known about immunity in health and disease, yet integration of this understanding with engineering technology for therapeutics delivery and diagnostics is lacking. The organizers laboratories are committed to the development and application of novel biomaterials for detection of immune system cells and modulation of immunity. We feel that that this is an important new line of investigation since new developments in materials science and engineering may pave the way for effective therapeutics and/or diagnostics that circumvent complications and limitations of conventional strategies. This necessitates an urgent need for interdisciplinary translation and communication. Major advances in this critical interface area that bridges immunology with materials science necessitates multidisciplinary interaction and new approaches combined with an avenue for communication which is the subject of this workshop.
The workshop will highlight efforts to leverage multiple talents and focus to address the issue of fixing immune defects, restoring immune competence and monitoring of the progress of the immune response. Invited speakers will be chosen from groups worldwide that have been successful in addressing an engineering approach to immunotherapy and immunomonitoring.
Broader Impacts. One of the most successful medical interventions in history is prophylactic intervention (vaccination), which involves the combination of synthetic material adjuvants and disease-associated antigens. This fortuitous marriage of material science and immunology led to the elimination of small pox and polio, two of the worst global infectious diseases. By contrast, therapies for many other disease states involving immune system dysregulation are poorly developed or simply unavailable. This workshop will focus on a transformative topic that is gaining great attention because of its importance in health and disease: nanomaterial intervention in shaping and detection of immunity. There has been much progress in the areas of nanotechnology, and on a parallel path, immunology, but currently there have been incremental advances in the crosstalk of both fields for societal benefits. One reason for this attenuated development is lack of communication and collaboration. A second reason is simply lack of appreciation of the synergistic applications of nanotechnology in immunology and how immunological understandings can be harnessed to create safe nanomaterials for new effective vaccines and boosting immune responses in cancer and autoimmune disease. This workshop will encourage new collaborations in which the nanomaterial development aspect will be linked in a synergistic way with immunity for development of new therapeutics and diagnostics. A diverse set of speakers, including women and underrepresented minorities will participate as speakers, panelists and organizers. The workshop will expose and challenge a multidisciplinary group of researchers, including academic faculty, students and postdocs and industrial researchers to the applications of nanotechnology in shaping and tracking immunity. Additionally, a panel of experts will discuss mechanisms for fostering interactions and support for this new area of research.
This workshop aims to communicate the promise of nanotechnology in shaping immunity. The title of the workshop is "Nanomaterials shaping and detecting immune responses". There are no recent meetings or workshops that are similar in scope or focus. The targeted audience for this workshop include: chemists, materials scientists, engineers (of all disciplines), immunologists, biologists and clinicians. Areas to be covered include; drug delivery to immune cells, active immunotherapy, nanomaterial vaccine development, immune response to nanomaterials and nanodiagnostics. The workshop will thus highlight efforts to leverage the materials engineering with immunological methods to develop approaches for new therapeutics and diagnostics of the immune response. We are in the process of organizing the workshop at Yale. The meeting is scheduled for late Spring/ early Summer. Flyers and advertisment will be distributed at least two months in advance once the date and agenda have been set. We anticipate 12-15 speakers will be invited ranging in both the junior and senior faculty ranks. In addition, we are inviting three distinguished panelists (one NSF program director, one NIH program director and one DOD program Director) to discuss the opportunities for funding in nanobiomedicine in general. The workshop is organized in 5 sessions, each session will have 3 speakers. Session 1: Nanotechnology for drug delivery to effector cells. Session II: Nanotechnology for vaccine development. Session III: Nanotechnology for imaging and detection of the immune response. Session IV: Nanotoxicology. Session V: Funding opportunities in nanobiomedicine.
