Home Department: Undeclared
Mentor: Siddharth Krishnan (Electrical Engineering)

"Implantable Bioelectronic Intratumoral Vaccine to Reprogram Immunorefractory Cold Tumors"

Nearly 80% of all cancers are classified as immune-excluded “cold tumors”, which resist current immunotherapies. There are no treatments locally and continuously triggering immunoresponse. To overcome this, Kyle’s project engineers an intratumoral implant that houses genetically modified cells secreting immune-checkpoint inhibitors (anti-CTLA4) and IL-12. The device will be evaluated by quantifying sustained therapeutic secretion, then cocultured with immunoresistant tumor and T cells to measure T-cell activation and immunogenic cell death. This work will demonstrate that such intratumoral devices can become “in situ vaccines” to reprogram cold tumors into hot, turning one treated tumor into a driver of systemic anti-tumor immunity.