Our Research
Engineering Immunity Through Interdisciplinary Science
The Irvine Lab merges immunology, biotechnology, and materials chemistry to engineer the immune system in new ways. We develop tools and technologies that enable precise control over immune responses—revealing new insights into immunity and creating novel treatments for cancer and infectious disease. Our research is organized around three complementary themes, each focused on applying engineering principles to enhance the immune system’s ability to prevent and treat human disease.
Engineering timing and location of immune stimulation for enhanced vaccines
Vaccines have traditionally been administered as bolus injections, leading to transient kinetics of antigen and inflammatory cues in lymph nodes. A major focus of our work is to understand how controlling the timing of exposure of the immune system to antigen and inflammatory cues influences the response to immunization, and to develop new technologies to control these kinetics and target the delivery of vaccines to specific sites in lymphoid organs that can amplify the immune response and overcome barriers to the elicitation of protective immune responses.
Discovering new strategies to modulate innate immunity
Controlled stimulation of innate immunity is critical for vaccine adjuvants and plays an important role in cancer immunotherapies. Despite their critical roles, the mechanisms of action of innate immune-modulating therapeutics such as vaccine adjuvants are often poorly understood. We study both adjuvants and vaccine delivery formulations, and seek to discover new and more effective innate immune stimulators for next-generation therapeutics.
Engineering timing and location of immune stimulation for cancer immunotherapy
Immunotherapies have transformed the treatment of cancer, but treatments that are effective in a majority of patients, especially for common solid tumors, remain elusive. Many immune-stimulatory agents are too toxic to administer in the bloodstream, and this has been a major restraint on the discovery of new safe and effective immunotherapies. We develop strategies to localize immunotherapy drugs to tumors or tumor-draining lymphoid organs to engineer their function and employ highly potent immunotherapy agents safely. Study of these new therapeutic approaches provides important new insights into the function of the immune system and its battle with cancer.