Theranostics 2017; 7(14):3504-3516. doi:10.7150/thno.19017 This issue Cite
Review
1. Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
2. Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics and Center for Nanotechnology in Drug Delivery, Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
3. Department of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
The immune system protects the body against a wide range of infectious diseases and cancer by leveraging the efficiency of immune cells and lymphoid organs. Over the past decade, immune cell/organ therapies based on the manipulation, infusion, and implantation of autologous or allogeneic immune cells/organs into patients have been widely tested and have made great progress in clinical applications. Despite these advances, therapy with natural immune cells or lymphoid organs is relatively expensive and time-consuming. Alternatively, biomimetic materials and strategies have been applied to develop artificial immune cells and lymphoid organs, which have attracted considerable attentions. In this review, we survey the latest studies on engineering biomimetic materials for immunotherapy, focusing on the perspectives of bioengineering artificial antigen presenting cells and lymphoid organs. The opportunities and challenges of this field are also discussed.
Keywords: artificial immune cells, lymphoid organs