CBE Ollis Lecture: Peter Zandstra (Univ. of British Columbia)

Abstract

Engineering Immune System Development

Engineered T cells are at the leading edge of clinical cell therapy. T cell therapies have had a remarkable impact on patient care for a subset of hematological malignancies. This foundation has motivated the development of off-the-shelf engineered cell therapies for a broad range of devastating indications. Achieving this vision will require cost-effective manufacturing of precision cell products capable of addressing multiple process and clinical-design challenges. Pluripotent stem cell (PSC)-derived engineered T cells are emerging as a solution of choice. To unleash the full potential of PSC-derived T cell therapies, the field will require technologies capable of robustly orchestrating the complex series of time- and dose-dependent signaling events needed to recreate functional T cell development in the laboratory. In this seminar I will present our recent progress in this field and outline timely opportunities for advancement with an emphasis on niche engineering, computational modeling and synthetic biology.

Papers:

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37928777/
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36849828/
3. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37090676/
4. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35213533/

Biography

Dr. Peter Zandstra is the Director of the School of Biomedical Engineering and the Director of the Michael Smith Laboratories at the University of British Columbia. The Zandstra lab is interested in how individual cells form complex tissues and organs. His research focuses on understanding multiscale interactions between cells, and the influence of these interactions on internal regulatory control networks, and the external microenvironment that shapes cell fate and functional tissue development. His team is developing mathematical models of interactions between cellular regulatory networks and their local microenvironment, and using model predictions to guide the design of engineered niches and synthetic cells that detect, select and control functional tissue development from adult and pluripotent stem cells. These discoveries will elucidate the process of multicellular organization into complex functional tissues and enable production of therapeutically relevant cell types, with a particular focus on the blood cell forming system.