WHY? Natural evolution generated ‘immunity’ mechanisms that prevent and reverse pathological processes. These mechanisms provide inspiration, machinery, and a starting blueprint, but not the endpoint for how cancer and other diseases can be prevented and cured. We aim to better understand these beautifully dynamic processes and their constraints and further evolve and engineer them as programmable modular mechanisms for disease treatment and prevention.
HOW? Using genetic and genomics tools guided by directed evolution and rational design, we reconfigure immunity across scales, from generating new proteins and receptors to cell functions and coordinated responses at the whole-body level. This allows us to discover and design programmable mechanisms fundamentally different from those previously identified, and implement these as therapeutic interventions that we rigorously test in preclinical models and work with our partners to advance to clinical testing.
