Clara Korley
MIT Department:
Chemical Engineering
Faculty Mentor:
Paula Hammond
Research Supervisor:
Aidan Kindopp, Julia Treese
Undergraduate Institution:
Georgia Institute of Technology
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.
