Dr. Melody Swartz seminar, Fredrickson Lecture
Dr. Melody Swartz, the William B. Ogden Professor of Molecular Engineering and Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, will deliver the 2023 Fredrickson Lecture, "Lymphatic vessels: Where biotransport meets immunity" on April 25.
The Fredrickson Lecture was established in 2001 to honor the late Professor Emeritus Arnold (Arnie) Fredrickson upon his retirement and foster a broader intellectual interaction between undergraduate and graduate students.
Abstract:
While the traditional view of lymphatic vessel function is to drain excess fluid from peripheral tissues and return them to the blood circulation, there is a growing appreciation for lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) as important players in immunity, as they are the first cells that come into direct contact with peripheral antigens, cytokines, danger signals and immune cells travelling from peripheral tissues to lymph nodes. They also form conduits in the lymph node that direct different molecules to different cells, for example to B cells and immature dendritic cells, in turn helping to regulate the spatial and temporal kinetics of antigen presentation. We aim to understand how lymphatic vessels and their transport functions affect and regulate immunity, and further, how that might be manipulated for immunotherapy. In contrast to passive drainage, we found that LECs actively transport fluid and solutes, which not only regulates the kinetics of antigen transport to the lymph node but also modulates local interstitial flow. Furthermore, LECs can directly regulate immune cells – for example, by taking up and cross-presenting exogenous antigens to educate naïve T cells towards a memory phenotype. In chronic infection and cancer, lymphatic vessels can expand (lymphangiogenesis) and we explore how this affects adaptive immune responses. On the translational side, we are engineering novel strategies to exploit lymphangiogenesis for cancer immunotherapy. Beyond cancer, our findings suggest that LECs may be potential targets for immunomodulation in vaccination, autoimmunity, and allergy.
Bio:
Melody A. Swartz is the William B. Ogden Professor of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. Her research is focused on the lymphatic system and aims to understand its roles in immunity and pathophysiology, especially in cancer. Her lab draws on bioengineering approaches in cell biology and physiology, to investigate the role of lymphatic vessels in maintaining immunological tolerance and the role of lymphangiogenesis in controlling inflammation and immunity. Her lab applies this knowledge to develop novel immunotherapeutic approaches in cancer, including lymph node-targeting vaccine approaches, as well as in vitro model systems that recapitulate relevant features of the 3D, perfused tumor microenvironment.
Swartz obtained her BS from Johns Hopkins and PhD from MIT, both in Chemical Engineering, and carried out postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham & Women’s Hospital. She started her independent career at Northwestern University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and then spent 13 years at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Institute of Bioengineering, where she eventually served as Institute Director. She then joined the newly formed University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Ben May Dept for Cancer Research, and serves as co-director of the Chicago Immunoengineering Innovation Center. Among her honors and awards, she is a MacArthur Fellow and member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
