Immune Engineering
The immune system interacts with nearly all implanted materials and cellular therapies, making it a critical consideration in the design of bioengineering technologies. This advanced course examines immune responses to biomaterials, medical devices, and transplanted cells, and explores strategies to modulate these responses. Topics include foreign body responses, fibrosis, transplant rejection, cell and tissue engineering, mRNA vaccines, CAR-T therapies, and hypo-immune engineered tissues and organs. Students will apply course concepts through the design of novel immunoengineering technologies while developing skills in critical evaluation of primary research literature.
Topics
- Students will be able to explain how the immune system responds to implanted biomaterials and transplanted cellular therapies, evaluate the mechanisms underlying immune-mediated device failure and graft rejection, and apply engineering strategies to modulate immune responses for therapeutic benefit. Students will also develop skills in critically analyzing primary research literature in immunoengineering.
- Describe interactions between immune cells and implanted biomaterials, engineered tissues, and transplanted cells. Explain how the immune system recognizes and responds to chemical, biological, and cellular cues. Predict immune signaling pathways and downstream responses activated by specific molecular stimuli or receptor interactions. Design material modification strategies to mitigate adverse immune responses and improve device performance. Identify genetic and molecular engineering targets for creating hyper-immune or hypo-immune cellular constructs. Apply immunoengineering principles to the design of mRNA vaccines, engineered proteins, and cell-based immunotherapies.
Official catalogue course objectives and student learning outcomes
Prerequisites & course information
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Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027