David Mooney
Harvard University and Wyss Institute
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
mooneyd@seas.harvard.edu
There are hundreds of clinical trials of cell therapy currently underway, with the goal of curing a variety of diseases, but simple cell infusions lead to large-scale cell death and little control over cell fate. We propose a new approach, in which material systems are first used either as cell carriers or attractors of host cell populations, and in either case the material then programs the cells in vivo and ultimately disperses the cells to surrounding host tissues or organs. The potential utility of this approach is being investigated in applications ranging from regenerative medicine to cancer immunotherapy.