Ma Laboratory for Immune Engineering

The immune system is probably the most complex and sophisticated self-defense system and plays a central role in maintaining tissue homeostasis. Malfunction of the immune system is involved in many disorders, such as cancer, autoimmunity, and chronic infections. A systematic understanding and controlled intervention of immune cell signaling in lymphoid and peripheral tissues hold great promise for addressing these outstanding biomedical challenges. The research at the Ma Laboratory lies at the interface of immunology and engineering, in an emerging field: immune engineering. Our goal is to decode the molecular and cellular crosstalk between immune cells and their microenvironment in normal and pathological conditions (e.g., tumor) and leverage these crosstalk mechanisms to develop novel biomaterials, protein, and cell-based precision immunotherapies. Our research involves a combination of genetic, chemistry, engineering, computational tools, and mouse genetic models.