Research Interests
Synthetic Mechanobiology
Multicellular organisms employ cellular adhesion for a host of critical functions, including tissue development and repair, neuronal wiring, and immune cell trafficking. These processes (and a plethora of others) are controlled by a diverse group of receptors called cell adhesion molecules (CAMs), which translate an extracellular binding event into an intracellular signaling response that typically includes cytoskeletal reorganization. I aim to apply approaches from synthetic biology to elucidate principles of how molecular principles of cellular mechanics facilitate multicellular organization.
By fusing orthogonal binding domains to transmembrane and intracellular domains from cell adhesion molecules, synthetic cell-cell interactions can be generated. I am interested in how CAM molecular architecture modulates cell-cell adhesion mechanics.
Expressing combinations of synthetic CAMs with orthogonal extracellular domains programs connectivity within a multicellular assembly. This approach should enable investigation of how cell patterning relates to function within a tissue.
Synthetic adhesion can remodel how distinct tissue interact to yield novel tissue structures with cooperative mechanics. Synthetic adhesion molecules could potentially be applied to organoid engineering for disease modeling or for tissue engineering in regenerative medicine.
Adoptive cell transfer of chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells has found remarkable success in treating B cell lymphoma and leukemia. However, the tumor microenvironment can limit T cell infiltration and target recognition. I aim to apply synthetic adhesion to overcome current limitations of immune cell therapies.
