Title: ISAM Webinar: What is needed to realize aerosol immune-engineering? 

Thursday, 30th March  2023, 8 am – 9 am (San Diego, CA); 11 am – 12 am (New York, NY); 5 pm – 6 pm (Paris, France)

Follow this link to register for the zoom webinar

Presenter: Catherine Fromen Ph.D.

Facilitators:

• Jessica Oakes
• Carsten Ehrhardt
• Barbara Rothen-Rutishauser (ISAM president)

Webinar content

• Immunotherapies and immune engineering are approaches that have recently captivated the pharmaceutical industry, from the delivery of biologics that modulate immune checkpoints, adoptively transferred chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells, or precision nanoparticles that direct immune responses for prophylactic or therapeutic immune responses. The potential to translate findings from other routes of administration into aerosol immunotherapies poses incredible potential for manipulating the local mucosal-specific microenvironment, engaging specialized pulmonary cellular defenders, and accessing lymphoid tissue to redirect systemic adaptive and memory responses. In this talk, I will provide my perspective on the outstanding needs and opportunities for thinking about aerosol immune engineering, while highlighting some recent advances in the area. I will also discuss some on-going efforts in my research group in the areas of nanoparticle immune engineering and preclinical model development that we hope will contribute to furthering this area of research. 

About the presenter

• Catherine Fromen is an Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University in 2014 and performed postdoctoral studies at the University of Michigan as a University of Michigan’s President’s Postdoctoral Fellow. She joined the University of Delaware in 2017, where her research group focuses on applying chemical engineering principles to challenges surrounding pulmonary drug delivery. Her research and publications have spanned the design of inhalable immune-modulatory formulations and the development of experimental dynamic, full volume approximations of the airways. Recent accolades include the AIChE’s 35 Under 35 Award, NSF CAREER Award, and NIH Early-Stage Investigator MIRA Award. She is a member of numerous professional societies, including ATS, AAPS, and of course ISAM, where she is currently serving as the Chair of the Awards Committee and a Women in ISAM Networking Group leader.