News & Updates
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The lab's first paper is now out in Matter! This work details how you can make injectable, supramolecular hydrogels using extracellular vesicles as building blocks. It also includes the use of yogurt (!) derived EVs to both understand the material properties of this system and create pro-regenerative biomaterials. Congratulations to Artemis and our visiting scientist Cate for this achievement.
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Congratulations to our postdoctoral fellow Dr. Robert Hincapie on his recent Postdoctoral Enrichment Program Award from the Burrough's Wellcome Fund!
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Dr. Correa was selected as a Beckman Young Investigator! This award from the Beckman Foundation will go to support our efforts in developing hybrid materials that bring together the best of synthetic and natural nanomaterials.
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The lab received its first external funding from the NIH! We are pleased to announce receiving a R21 Trailblazer Award from the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging & Bioengineering to develop artificial lymph node materials to train therapeutic T cells.
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Congratulations to Dr. Robert Hincapie on winning the prestigious F32 Fellowship from the NIH! This fellowship is through the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging & Bioengineering and will support Robert's efforts to develop novel biomaterials for cellular immune engineering.
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The Lab Goes to Baltimore for #BMES2024! Santi, Artemis, James, Ryan, Sarah, Satya, Anthony, and Cindy went to the lab's FIRST national conference. All the students presented awesome posters.
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The Lab welcomes our newest PhD student, Oriana Marrone! Oriana is co-advised by the Correa and McFaline-Figueroa Lab.
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Congrats to Satya Nayagam for winning a NSF GRFP Fellowship and to Sarah Bortel for an Honorable Mention!
Our research
Nanostructured hydrogels
We construct macroscopic biomaterials using nanoscale building blocks. Leveraging dynamic interactions, we use nanoparticles like liposomes to physically crosslink polymer networks to give rise to injectable biomaterials. We functionalize these advanced materials by engineering the surface chemistry of the nanoparticle building blocks, introducing capabilities like affinity-governed release.
Cell-derived biomaterials
We are developing nanotechnology directly from biological matter, using cells to generate bioactive nanovesicles. We use these nanovesicles as immunotherapeutics and explore them in the context of supramolecular biomaterials and scaffolds. With this approach, we preserve bioactive features from cells to create materials with biomimetic properties that allow us to study the intrinsic immunomodulatory properties of tumors, immune cells and stem cells.
Immune cell biomimicry
The immune synapse governs essential cell fate decisions that determine the nature of adaptive immune responses. Within this synapse, biological signals are tightly regulated both in space and time to achieve a particular outcome. Harnessing these capabilities is essential for enabling the growing field of cellular therapies, which require extensive reprogramming of immune cells.
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To this end, we are designing self-assembling nanostructures that can precisely orient multiple biological signaling motifs. Our goal is to use this technology to pattern biomaterials to simulate the immune synapse to better understand and control immune cell differentiation.
