Qian Chen

Cancer immunotherapy is a revolutionary cancer treatment that aims to activate or boost inherent immunological systems to efficiently recognize and kill cancer cells. In the past decade, cancer immunotherapy has achieved tremendous progress and has become a promising clinical strategy to treat or even cure cancer. For example, chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, engineered with antigen-targeting region fused with signaling chains of T cell receptor and costimulatory molecules genetically, has achieved outstanding progress in the clinic, particularly in treating hematologic malignancies. Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy, blocking the inhibitory pathways with the antagonist, is demonstrated to be one of the most effective strategies in treating various solid cancers in clinic. Despite encouraging clinical results of ICB therapy with the possibility to cure patients with late-stage cancer, the low clinical objective response rates and the risk of causing autoimmune diseases remain as major limitations.    

To address these issues, Chen has recently developed a variety of novel biomaterials to improve the objective response rate and reduce immune-related adverse events of cancer immunotherapy. 

Chen's research focuses on leveraging biomaterials and biomedical engineering approaches for diverse applications in multimodal biomedical imaging, drug delivery, and cancer immunotherapy. During her Ph.D. study, Chen constructed a variety of nano-probes based on natural biomaterials human serum albumin, which can be used for tumor multimodal imaging. She has also developed albumin-based nano-drugs for cancer therapy. In addition, she also explored the biomaterials-assisted local treatment methods, including localized radiotherapy and phototherapy, to trigger tumor-specific immunological responses, which in combination with immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) therapy, could achieve inhibit tumor recurrence and metastasis. During the postdoctoral period, Chen mainly engaged in tumor immunotherapy and tissue engineering-related research. She designed in situ sprayed immunotherapeutic hydrogel, which could scavenge H+ in the surgical wound site, reversing the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment to promote antitumor immune responses.