Engineering more potent vaccines for the treatment of cancer and autoimmunity

Vaccination against infectious diseases has long been heralded as one of the greatest advancements in public health, yet its application to other clinical indications has fallen short of expectations. In this thesis, we apply engineering principles to develop more potent vaccines in the treatment of cancer and autoimmunity. Both major components of molecular vaccines, antigen and adjuvant, are independently explored as a part of this work. Our antigen studies sought to improve the delivery of peptide epitopes to lymphoid organs by fusing epitopes to inert protein carriers with defined pharmacokinetic properties. To promote anti-tumor immunity, we found that antigen carriers should 1) protect peptide cargo from proteolytic degradation, 2) be appropriately bulky to drain into the lymphatics, and 3) be rapidly cleared once in the blood to prevent tolerization at distal poorly inflamed organs.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctoral

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Mehta, Naveen K.,Ph.D.Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Darrell J. Irvine and K. Dane Wittrup.

• Biological Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/123065

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/123065