The University of Massachusetts Amherst

Upcoming Events

☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐, ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ ☐☐
☐☐:☐☐ ☐☐
☐☐☐☐☐☐ ☐☐☐☐☐☐ ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐
☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐, ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ ☐☐
☐☐:☐☐ ☐☐
☐☐☐☐☐☐ ☐☐☐☐☐☐ ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐
☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐, ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐ ☐☐
☐☐:☐☐ ☐☐
☐☐☐☐☐☐ ☐☐☐☐☐☐ ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐

Research Themes

Cell Based Therapies

Develop and utilize novel delivery technologies to modify cells that are used for a variety of therapies. Examples include ongoing work to modify bacteria to invade tumor tissue and deliver payloads designed to kill or arrest the growth of the tumor. Additionally, strategies are being developed to use delivery technologies to modify cells of the immune system for adoptive transfer into a syngeneic host. The aim is to develop efficient ex vivo approaches to manipulating cellular responses and utilize them in a variety of therapeutic approaches.

Learn More

Minter and colleagues have developed humanized, lymphocyte transfer model of graft-versus-host disease and demonstrated that polymer antibody complexes can be readily introduced with high efficacy into hard-to-transfect human peripheral mononuclear blood cells, eliciting a biological response sufficient to alter disease progression (Mol. Ther. 2016, 24, 2118-2130).

Research Highlight

Innovation / Technology

Exploiting Apoptotic Caspases for targeted cell death via Intracellular Delivery

How many active caspases does it take to induce apoptosis? Do pro-survival and pro-apoptotic intracellular balances influence a caspase’s ability to induce cell death (i.e. potency)?

Cysteine aspartate proteases (caspases) act as the molecular scissors of apoptotic cell death, disintegrating diverse cellular components necessary for cell survival and growth.

Learn More