Traumatic spinal cord injuries may lead to devastating loss of neurological function and there are currently no effective clinical methods to regenerate damaged nerve tissues. Besides, the inflammatory response can cause secondary injuries and inhibit regeneration. Novel treatments like cell therapy and localized drug delivery have shown greater efficacy when delivered by hydrogel scaffolds. However, effective scaffolds that can both culture neuronal cells and deliver therapeutic drugs are rare. Therefore, there is a need for an effective treatment of spinal cord injury that can locally deliver therapies with anti inflammatory properties to the spinal cord, as well as provide a support material for neural stem cell therapy. Here, we report a hydrogel composed of peptides that can self-assemble into a hydrogel in physiological conditions. The self-assembling peptide is conjugated to a polymer that enables drug loading and bioactive properties. Self-assembling peptides and a drug loading polymer were synthesized and characterized, loaded with bivalirudin, a model anti-inflammatory peptide drug, and assembled into a hydrogel formulation. The hydrogel was used to encapsulate neural stem cells to assay its efficacy as a support material. The gel was also assayed for its ability to release the anti-inflammatory drug when exposed to enzymes upregulated during inflammation. We anticipate seeing effective ligation of the polymer with the self-assembling peptide, successful hydrogel formulation, and neural stem cell viability when encapsulated in the hydrogel. A successful self-assembling formulation will ultimately work to provide effective cell therapy and anti-inflammatory drug delivery to the spinal cord, with potential for broader drug loading applications in the future.

T cell-based immunotherapy has shown immense therapeutic potential for the late-stage treatment of cancer. The synthetic ex vivo activation of T cells is a key step in manufacturing these therapies, inducing proliferation and cytotoxic functionalization of the cells before reinfusion into the patient. This is generally done with the use of artificial antigen presenting cells (aAPCs) consisting of antibodies triggering the receptor signaling necessary for activation directly conjugated to a spherical polystyrene bead. Although intended to mimic the function of antigen presenting cells (APCs) in the body, currently used aAPCs do not fully recapitulate natural size, morphology, or membrane fluidity, all of which have been demonstrated to be important determinants of activation properties. Therefore, there is a need for an activation platform that more closely mimics APCs in vivo, which could significantly improve the efficiency of T cell activation for use in cancer immunotherapies. To achieve this, we utilize cell-molded silica microparticles that retain the size and morphology of their cellular templates. The fusion of an antibody-loaded lipid bilayer to these silica microparticles results in a closer recreation of natural APCs. We have fabricated these cell-molded silica aAPCs with various cell template morphologies and lipid compositions. Using a variety of cell-based assays, we are characterizing the capacity of these aAPCs to induce T cell proliferation, cytokine release, and surface marker expression, all of which are metrics indicative of activation. If these results indicate that this platform successfully improves the efficiency of T cell activation as compared to current alternatives, this has the potential to improve the cost and scalability of these promising cancer treatments.