Recent News
June 2024
Recent publications from Shreya, Arielle, and Biplab were featured in the Drexel News Blog! Drexel researchers exploit the “sweet tooth” of hungry immune cells in this emerging era of immune-targeted therapies
June 2024
Congrats, Liv! What an awesome thesis defense. Wishing you all the best in your move to GA Tech!
June 2024
Shreya, Akari, Ken, and Arielle presented their research at World Biomaterials Congress (WBC) 2024 in Daegu, South Korea. We heard after that Shreya received the Best Poster Presentation Award for the conference – congrats, Shreya!
May 2024
Arielle was selected to present her research at the Drexel Emerging Graduate Scholars (DEGS) Conference, a homegrown University-wide conference highlighting Drexel's graduate student research.
At the 2024 Drexel Graduate Student Awards Ceremony, three TIMs lab members (Shreya, Ken, and Akari) received the Dean’s Award for Best Research Poster Presentation at the 2024 DEGS Conference. Shreya also received Research Excellence Award. Sorry we missed the ceremony while we were in Korea!
April 2024
Akari passes her candidacy! Shreya participated in 2024 Society for Biomaterials Drug Delivery SIG Early Career Presentation Competition!
March 2024
Arielle’s recent publication in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering, titled "Injectable Granular Hydrogels Enable Avidity-Controlled Biotherapeutic Delivery," was selected as one of the recipients of this year’s School of Biomedical Engineering Student Best Paper Award. This award is to recognize outstanding student research that blazes new trails and advances biomedical science and engineering.
January 2024
First of all – a huge congrats to Biplab, who received a Cotswold Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship! The award is intended to foster the career development of Drexel University postdoctoral researchers pursuing a career in academic research and seeking long-term employment at an American educational or research institution. This fellowship is awarded in recognition of outstanding scientific record and promise of productive scholarship. Keep an eye out for him on the job market!
Check out new papers from:
Arielle: Injectable Granular Hydrogels Enable Avidity-Controlled Biotherapeutic Delivery
December 2023
We hosted the 5th Annual Immune Modulation and Engineering Symposium (IMES) and hope to see you next year! Save the date for Nov. 13-15, 2024!
November 2023
Drexel University College of Medicine Discovery Day: Shreya, Arielle, and Akari had poster presentations. Congrats to Akari who brought home an award for Outstanding Junior Graduate Student Poster!
October 2023
Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES): Shreya, Akari, and Arielle presented their research in Seattle!
September 2023
Shreya and Akari presented at the Carnegie Mellon Forum on Biomedical Engineering. Congrats to Akari, who received an Outstanding Presentation Award!
June 2023
Congrats, Elisabeth!!
June 2023
The Graduate College recognized outstanding contributors to the university at our Graduate Student Day. Drexel Graduate Women in Science and Engineering (DGWISE) received the Community Impact Award, and Arielle was recognized with a Teaching Assistance Excellence Award!
May 2023
The lab attended the Drexel Cell and Gene Therapy Symposium!
May 2023
The lab also spends time outside of the lab together! We all had a great time attending Drexel’s Festival of Nations!
April 2023
The lab had a great time at DEGS, and Elisabeth received second place in the research poster competition! Congrats Elisabeth!
March 2023
Happy Birthday Ken!
March 2023
A huge thanks to the American Heart Association for funding our Career Development Award to study and re-engineer the post-infarct immune response!
March 2023
She’s racking up the awards!
PhD student Shreya Soni was in DC for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting where she won first place in the Student E-Poster Competition at the in the Developmental Biology, Genetics, and Immunology section for her work entitled Injectable Hydrogels Enable Small Molecule Drug Delivery For Local Immunotherapy. Link
Shreya’s recent publication in Biomaterials Science was also recognized by Drexel BIOMED with the 2023 Student Best Paper Award! She shares the title with Felix Agbavor from the Liang lab. ICYMI: Sustained release of drug-loaded nanoparticles from injectable hydrogels enables long-term control of macrophage phenotype.
Congrats Shreya!!
February 2023
Two more manuscripts are wrapped up and released into the wild!
First up is Shreya Soni & Arielle D’Elia’s review on Control of the post infarct immune microenvironment through biotherapeutic and biomaterial based approaches. This article in Drug Delivery and Translational Research covers it all – from animal models of infarct to therapeutics and their delivery systems that can heal a damaged heart.
Second, international collaboration with the Platten and Breckwoldt groups shows that our delivery of TLR agonists by cyclodextrin nanoparticles induces tumor regression in experimental glioma by targeting blood-borne macrophages.
Treatment reshapes the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment and orchestrates tumor clearing by pro-inflammatory tumor-associated myeloid cells, independent of T cells and NK cells. Using MRI, we identify image-based signatures of therapeutic response.
Check out the full article in Nature Communications: T cell-independent eradication of experimental glioma by intravenous TLR7/8-agonist-loaded nanoparticles.
January 2023
A warm welcome to our new students, including Alex Osidach who is starting his PhD rotation and Ezgi Tezer who is completing her MS thesis with Vijay Bhoj, MD, PhD at UPenn.
December 2022
Our last minute holiday party featured a charcutertree! Other goodies not pictured. Happy Holidays and enjoy the break!
December 2022
The lab had a blast as #IMES2022 and I hope you did too! It was a pleasure to be able to co-host this meeting alongside amazing colleagues. A huge congrats to all the student award winners, including our own Shreya Soni who took home the Award for Innovative Research! See you all next year! Link
November 2022
Congrats to Shreya and the entire team! This labor of love if finally out and available with open access: Sustained release of drug-loaded nanoparticles from injectable hydrogels enables long-term control of macrophage phenotype.
This work was featured on the back cover of Biomaterials Science, and Dr. Rodell was highlighted as an Emerging Investigator with an interview on the journal’s blog.
November 2022
Hot off the press: Our special issue of Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews, highlighting Emerging tools and targets for immune engineering and modulation is out, co-organized with Dr. Kara Spiller. Check out the editorial and outstanding articles.
November 2022
Labsgiving doesn’t always come with Turkey, but it’s still one of the best times to celebrate with the lab!
October 2022
It’s been a busy month with trips to the ACS and BMES annual meetings. Great presentations by Shreya, Arielle, and Victor!
September 2022
Welcome to Lindsay Hager who started her research co-op!
July 2022
The lab received 5-year $1.9M NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) R35 Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) for our work Designing Supramolecular Delivery Strategies to Understand and Exploit Synergies in Immunoregenerative Medicine. This will broadly support our continued efforts to explore therapeutic drug delivery in the context of organ injury. Link
July 2022
Another successful PhD candidate. Congrats Arielle!
June 2022
Welcome to our newest lab members! Joining us are Akari Seiner (PhD Student), Elisabeth Posthill (MS Student), and Olivia Jones (Drexel Undergrad).
May 2022
Victor Mishin defense his MS thesis on Photoresponsive Hydrogels Enable Geometrically Tunable Blood Shunts for Pediatric Use. No surprise, he passed with flying colors.
Congrats Victor! You’ve set a high bar for everyone coming after you! :)
May 2022
Congrats to Shreya on passing your candidacy!
April 2022
In person conferences are back, and we made it to ACS MARM. Congrats to Shreya, Arielle, and Victor on outstanding presentations!
March, 2022
We wish a warm welcome to two rotating students!
Ken Kim, PhD student, joins us from the College of Medicine in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in and Yagni Shah is an MS candidate in the Drug Discovery and Development (DDD) program. We look forward to having you both!
February, 2022
PhD student Shreya Soni won first place in the Student E-Poster Competition at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in the Developmental Biology, Genetics, and Immunology section for her work entitled The Identification and Targeted Delivery of Macrophage-Polarizing Drugs for Tissue Injury. (Link)
Congrats Shreya!!
January, 2022
Chris is selected as a member of the Early Career Editorial Advisory Board for ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering.
December, 2021
Thanks to everyone who attended and contributed to the symposium. A huge congratulations to all of our student presentation award winners at #IMES2021! We hope to see you again next year! (Link)
Coming Soon!
The agenda is coming together for the 3rd Annual Immune Modulation and Engineering Symposium at Drexel, and I’m getting excited! Looking forward to another amazing lineup of speakers. Save the date (Dec. 8-10, 2021) and registration info will be coming soon.
October, 2021
Happy Halloween!
August, 2021
Sylvia Cho finishes her summer as a STAR Scholar with a great showing at the Summer Showcase. She drew a crowd despite the heat. Thank you for all of your hard work Sylvia!
April, 2021
Graduate student Arielle D’Elia joins the lab for her rotation, and BS/MS candidate Victor Mishin joins us in collaboration with the BioCirc Research Lab. A big welcome to you both!
Work from our lab to develop a geometrically tunable blood shunt for use in pediatric heart reconstruction surgeries has been generously funded by The Hartwell Foundation. Congratulations to Dr. Josh Mell and the other Hartwell Investigators who are doing amazing work to improve healthcare outcomes for children. (Press Release)
Congratulations to Shreya and Abed! Their review on supramolecular delivery in immune modulation is out in Frontiers in Chemistry (Link).
February, 2021
Chris is featured on the University of Pennsylvania Bioengineering Alumni webpage (Link). Thanks to our friends next door for the opportunity to share a bit about my experience in Philly!
January, 2021
Shreya’s first first-author review is out in Acta Biomaterialia (Link). Congrats Shreya!
December, 2020
A final manuscript to close out the year - Quantification of Cellular Drug Biodistribution Addresses Challenges in Evaluating In Vitro and In Vivo Encapsulated Drug Delivery. (Link). Featured alongside other Hot Topics in Drug Delivery in Advanced Therapeutics.
November, 2020
Had a blast with #IMESDrexel. A huge thanks to all who attended and contributed to make such a great symposium possible! We look forward to seeing you again next year!
July, 2020
The Drexel Immune Modulation & Engineering Symposium will be going virtual this year. Registration coming soon!
March, 2020
Shreya Soni officially joins the group for her PhD. Welcome, Shreya!
January, 2020
New article is out at Cell Chemical Biology, showing myeloid-targeted nanocarriers efficiently inhibit cIAP for cancer immunotherapy in mice.
Chris joins Science Translational Medicine as an Associate Scientific Advisor!
Keep an eye out for upcoming Editor’s Choice highlights on the STM website or under publications listed here on the lab webpage.
November, 2019
New article is out at Seminars in Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery as part of continuing collaboration with the Gorman Cardiovascular Research Group, showing that injectable hydrogels prevent development of ischemic mitral regurgitation in large animal models of myocardial infarct.
October, 2019
Chris speaks at the BMES meeting in Philadelphia on supramolecular drug delivery platforms for cancer immunotherapy.
Chris speaks at and co-chairs the Drexel Immune Modulation & Engineering Symposium along with colleagues Kara Spiller and Yinghui Zhong. Many thanks to the amazing set of speakers and to all who were able to attend.
Chris’s review detailing methods of screening macrophage therapeutics is released in Theranostics, as part of a special issue of Critical Reviews of Immunotheranostics. As always, Theranostics is open access!.
We officially welcome our first round of students, including graduate students Shreya Sona, Abed Alsasa, and Jocelyn Kurtz as well as undergraduates Neha Nevasekar and Manny Patel. Welcome all to the group!
Now, we have some unpacking to do…
The Tissue Instructive Materials Lab is officially open in Bossone Hall. Drop in and say hello!
January, 2019
We are excited to announce
positions are available
at all levels starting in the Fall of 2019.
January, 2019
The lab webpage is finally live!