La Vanguardia, The Munich Eye, iSanidad, Medical Xpress, Europa Press, MSN, and Infosalus among other media channels highlight our new research on the potential of bioengineered scaffolds in advancing the field of cell-based therapies.
Together with researchers from the Institut d’Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi i Sunyer (IDIBAPS)-Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, we have developed novel lymph-node-inspired hydrogels that significantly enhance the activation, gene expression, and proliferation of CAR T cells. This breakthrough could optimize the production of CAR T cells, a promising immunotherapy for cancer, by providing a more efficient and cost-effective platform for cell manufacturing.
More info can be found in the peer-reviwed paper:
Lymph-Node Inspired Hydrogels Enhance CAR Expression and Proliferation of CAR T Cells
Miquel Castellote-Borrell, Marc Domingo, Francesca Merlina, Huixia Lu, Salut Colell, Mireia Bachiller, Manel Juan, Sonia Guedan, Jordi Faraudo*, Judith Guasch*
ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 2025, 17, 11, 16548–16560
doi.org/10.1021/acsami.4c1994
And in the different media channels that featured the research:
- El Icmab y el Idibaps desarrollan hidrogeles para mejorar la inmunoterapia contra el cáncer (La Vanguardia)
- Innovative Biomimetic Hydrogels Enhance CAR T Cell Immunotherapy (The Munich Eye)
- Investigadores españoles desarrollan hidrogeles que podrían optimizar la producción de células CAR-T (iSanidad)
- Newly-developed biomimetic materials can improve cancer immunotherapy (Medical Xpress)
- Desarrollan hidrogeles para mejorar la inmunoterapia contra el cáncer (InfoSalus)
- Newly-developed biomimetic materials can improve cancer immunotherapy (MSN)
- El Icmab y el Idibaps desarrollan hidrogeles para mejorar la inmunoterapia contra el cáncer (MSN)
- El Icmab y el Idibaps desarrollan hidrogeles para mejorar la inmunoterapia contra el cáncer (EuropaPress)
- Investigadors de l’ICMAB desenvolupen materials biomimètics per millorar la immunoteràpia contra el càncer - Cerdanyola.info (Cerdanyola Info)
- Lymph-Node Inspired Hydrogels Enhance CAR Expression and Proliferation of CAR T Cells - PubMed (NIH)
Funding
This study has received funding from the “La Caixa” Foundation, through the CaixaImpulse Program (grant no. CI23-20216) and the Spanish Government through grants CNS2023-144236 (MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR), 2024ICT149, PID2020-115296RA-I00, PID2021-124297NB-C33, the Severo Ochoa Program for Centers of Excellence awarded to ICMAB (CEX2023-001263 S), FPI fellowships PRE2021-098161 and PRE2020-093689, Ramón y Cajal program (RYC-2018-024442-I. It has also been funded by the Government of Catalonia (AGAUR) through grant 2021SGR01519, and the Max Planck Society via the Max Planck Partner Group “Dynamic Biomimetics for Cancer Immunotherapy”, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research (Heidelberg, Germany).
