As the mechanistic principles guiding tissue immunity unfold, the Reina Laboratory will focus on leveraging immune engineering technologies to enhance CD8 T cell functions in disease settings to unlock the next generation of immunotherapies.
We will devise approaches to:
A. Improve tissue infiltration and retention of immune cells by enforcing correct cellular positioning and interactions through the expression and/or delivery of ligand-receptor pairs
B. Manipulate the expression of nutrient transporters and critical enzymes, as well as introduce improvements to cellular detoxification mechanisms to enhance cellular fitness and tissue persistence
C. Develop ex vivo co-culture systems as a platform to screen potential novel compounds that modulate immune function.
These new approaches to control T cell fate and functionality will boost the effectiveness of the next-generation immune cellular therapies.