Clara Korley

Clara Korley

Biography

Clara Korley is a biomedical engineering major at the Georgia Institute of Technology
who has conducted research on drug delivery for cancer immunotherapies and on improving
the early detection of preeclampsia. She has been interested in the journey of a product from
the nascent technology to the finished device to the actual incorporation into the patient’s
healthcare. This process relied heavily on the intersection between biomedical engineering and
medicine. Clara’s appreciation for this process is what allows her to bring a unique perspective
to her research. Her fascination with these two fields began with her middle school interest in
genetically modified plants, which quickly transformed into an interest in the many processes
in the human body. Outside of academics, Clara is an avid reader and credits her ability to
understand and consider other perspectives to all of the books she has read, an essential quality
for biomedical research.

Employing Lipid Nanoparticles Layered with Sugar-Functionalized Polymers to
Target Immune Cells
Clara Korley1, Aidan Kindopp2,3, Julia Treese2,3, and Paula T Hammond2,3
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
2Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Despite recent advances in immunotherapy for many different types of cancers, treatment
options for patients with ovarian cancer remain limited. The goal of immunotherapies is to
elicit a response from the body’s immune system, training it to fight against cancer cells. Two
types of immune cells, dendritic cells (DCs) and macrophages, are important for initiating
these responses; therefore, delivering targeted immunotherapies to these cells is of high
interest. Here, we have synthesized a library of polymers functionalized with αGalNAc, a
sugar that binds to CLEC10A, which is a receptor expressed on both DCs and macrophages.
These modified polymers were layered onto lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) by layering the
positively charged core of an LNP with the negatively charged sugar-modified polymer to
generate LLNPs. We then dosed the LLNPs onto a co-culture of primary immune cells to test
whether DCs and macrophages were preferentially targeted. These cell association assays
determined which modified polymer, degree of functionalization, and ligand valency translated
to the highest selective transfection of DCs and macrophages. These results indicate the
potential of this sugar-functionalized polymer as a means of targeting immune cells with
various immunotherapies and the potential of ligand-modified polymers for targeting other
cell populations.