Funding from Transformative Technology in 2017/18
Academics
- Matthew Chin, Division of Medicine
- Joseph Harvey, Department of Biochemical Engineering, Engineering Sciences
The objective of this project was to employ nature-inspired engineering to tackle manufacturing challenges in a cancer treatment known as adoptive T cell therapy. The therapy is designed to “re-educate” cancer patients’ T cells (a type of immune cell) to fight cancer. However, it is expensive and requires multiple time-consuming steps for processing. Taking clues from how T cells naturally respond to different stimuli inside the human body, the researchers sought to design a culture platform to optimise T cell proliferation. To this end, gel-based biomaterials were designed and incorporated into microfluidic devices for T cell stimulation.
Outputs and Impacts
- Biomaterial Innovation: Developed a nature-inspired biomaterial for T cell culture devices, demonstrating that T cell cytokine secretion and proliferation can be modulated by the material's stiffness. Published in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces (2020).
Interdisciplinary Advancement: Pioneered the integration of biomaterials into microfluidic devices, introducing process intensification methods within cancer immunotherapy research. This concept led to an opinion article in Trends in Biotechnology (2020).
3D Culture System Development: The research has since been advanced by designing 3D culture systems to explore T cell behavior in complex microenvironments, offering new insights into T cell interactions and potential applications in immunotherapy.
- Publications include:
- Chin, M. H. W., Norman, M. D. A., Gentleman, E., Coppens, M.-O. & Day, R. M. A Hydrogel-Integrated Culture Device to Interrogate T Cell Activation with Physicochemical Cues. ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces 12. PMID: 33027591, 47355– 47367 (2020).
- Chin, M. H. W., Gentleman, E., Coppens, M.- O. & Day, R. M. Rethinking Cancer Immunotherapy by Embracing and Engineering Complexity. Trends in Biotechnology 38. Special Issue: Therapeutic Biomanufacturing, 1054–1065. issn:0167-7799 (2020).
- Todd, L., Chin, M. H. W. & Coppens, M.-O. Two conjectures on 3D Voronoi structures: a toolkit with biomedical case studies. Molecular Systems Design & Engineering 9, 912-919. http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/D4ME00036F (2024).
- Chin, M. H. W., Reid, B., Lachina, V., Acton, S. E. & Coppens, M.-O. Bioinspired 3D microprinted cell scaffolds: Integration of graph theory to recapitulate complex network wiring in lymph nodes. Biotechnology Journal 19, 2300359. https://doi.org/10.1002/biot.202300359 (2024). ( This article is recognised as a “Wiley Top Viewed Article”, ranking within the top 10% of most-viewed papers published by the journal in 2023).
- Chin, M. H. W., Linke, J. & Coppens, M.-O. Nature-inspired sustainable medical materials. Current Opinion in Biomedical Engineering 28, 100499. issn: 2468-4511. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobme.2023.100499 (2023).
- Matthew Chin has since been awarded a six figure Marie Curie Global Fellowship from the European Commission to conduct a research project on 3D bioprinted cancer models. From 2025-2026, he will be hosted by Harvard University with Prof. Jennifer Lewis, (School of Engineering and Applied Sciences & Wyss Institute) as his advisor. He will return to UCL from 2027-2028 with Prof. Marc-Olivier Coppens (Chemical Engineering and CNIE) to advise.
- Matthew is also part of the NexTGen team, a £20M Cancer Grand Challenges partnership, funded by CRUK, NCI and The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. In this work, he has developed a novel approach of combining mathematics, 3D printing, and algorithmic design to create microscale scaffolds that can be used as in vitro models in cancer research.
Close
