Sarah Duquette (MANALIS LAB)

Biophysical Characterization of Cytotoxic T cell Heterogeneity in Cancer Progression

Recent work has shown that T cell quality could be an indicator of immune checkpoint blockade response. We have seen previously that cells modulate their biophysical properties, such as mass, volume, and density, as they change states to optimize for certain functions. Could these properties potentially indicate the functionality of tumor infiltrating T cells? Here we aim to characterize cell function associated with different T cell buoyant mass ranges by combining novel cell sorting systems with downstream functional assays.

Cathy Wang (LANGER & BHATIA LABS)

Profiling Protease Dysregulation in Lung Cancer with Protease-activatable Nanotechnologies

Cancer hallmarks, such as angiogenesis, govern tumor growth and progression. Various proteases are dysregulated in these processes, but current tools are limited in showing if and where proteins are active. Therefore, we have developed protease-activatable nanotechnologies for multiscale activity profiling. In a murine Eml4-Alk lung cancer model, we show that the nanosensors can monitor tumor changes, and when translated into in situ probes, they enable visualization of activity to investigate cell and protease involvement in cancer hallmarks.