“Innovating Health” Distinguished Speaker Seminar Series – Professor Abraham Lee
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Microfluidic Cell Engineering for Immunotherapies
Adoptive cell therapy (ACT) is an immunotherapy that involves isolating immune cells (e.g., T cells) from a donor’s blood, genetically modifying them to express chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) targeting cancer biomarkers, and reintroducing them into patients. Microfluidic technologies streamline this process by addressing multiple steps, including cell harvesting, isolation, activation, expansion, and transfection. Two microfluidic platforms, the lateral cavity acoustic transducer (LCAT) and droplet microfluidics, are developed in our lab and used in the cellular engineering process. LCAT isolates, transfects, and expands T cells. The acoustic electric shear orbiting poration (AESOP) device, based on the LCAT, efficiently delivers genetic material into a large population of cells simultaneously. These capabilities optimize therapeutic efficacy of engineered cells and combine with gene editing tools for specific in vivo targeting. Using droplet microfluidics, we constructed artificial antigen-presenting cells (aAPCs) for antigen-specific T cell activation. By trapping single cells in microfluidic droplet compartments, we could study 3D cell morphology, facilitating understanding of immune cell activation and synapses.
Biography
Abraham (Abe) P. Lee is Chancellor’s Professor of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and MAE at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). He served as department chair for BME from 2010-2019. He is currently Director of the NSF I/UCRC “Center for Advanced Design & Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics” (CADMIM). Dr. Lee served as Editor-in-Chief for the Lab on a Chip journal from 2017-2020. Prior to UCI, he was Senior Technology Advisor at National Cancer Institute (NCI), Program Manager in the Microsystems Technology Office at DARPA (1999-2001), and a group leader with Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL). Dr Lee’s current research focuses on integrated microfluidic systems for precision medicine including liquid biopsy, microphysiological systems, cell engineering, and immunotherapy. His research has contributed to the founding of several start-up companies. He is inventor of over 60 issued US patents and is author of over 130 journals articles. Professor Lee was awarded the 2009 Pioneers of Miniaturization Prize and is fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE), the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the American Society of Mechanical Engineering (ASME), the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering, and the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES).
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