[초청강연] Rewiring Immunity for the Development of Novel Therapeutic Platform

Our immune system is believed to have developed over millions of years of evolution, with the
emergence of the innate immune system and then the adaptive immune system. Throughout
evolution, immunity has been primarily built to protect the body against infections by pathogens that
reside outside the body as well as to maintain tissue integrity and homeostasis within. Accordingly,
dysregulation of the immune system has the potential to cause not only an increased susceptibility to
infection, but can also contribute to a variety of diseases such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, and
degenerative disorders. In synthetic immunology, researchers utilize state-of-the-art genetic and
protein engineering tools to enhance or rewire the effector function of immune cells in order to find
novel therapeutic strategies for these refractory diseases. As a part of this effort, I will discuss our
recently published and ongoing research regarding engineering chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T
cells with downregulated expression of immune checkpoint receptors to treat cancer, and developing
a novel anti-inflammatory phagocytosis inducer to treat Alzheimer's disease.