2E: Biomaterials for Cellular Engineering

Date: Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Time: 3:45 PM to 5:15 PM
Room: Hanover CDE
Session Type: Concurrent Session 2

Description

Engineered biomaterials that functionally shape intracellular and plasma membrane microenvironments are expanding the biomaterial toolkit for cellular engineering. Looking beyond biomaterials as extracellular support scaffolds, this session will showcase and stimulate progress towards biocompatible biomaterials that closely interact with cellular machinery to engineer, expand and report cell functionality. Relevant examples consider programmable intracellular assembly of proteins and synthetic polymers, and cell surface functionalization with engineered proteins, nanomaterials and molecularly-defined polymer-lipid conjugates. We encourage contributions spanning fundamental studies (i.e., early design principles and proof-of-concept) and emergent applications across therapeutically-relevant cell types, from probiotic bacteria to human immune and stem cells.

Moderators:

Felipe Quiroz
Assistant Professor
Emory University School of Medicine

Cole DeForest
Professor, Bioengineering
University of Washington

  • 3:45 PM. 78. Engineered Hydrogels Extend Survival and Distribution of Transplanted Plasma Cells.Ameya Dravid, PhD1, Eshant Bhatia, PhD1, Graham Barber1, Shwetha Sridhar1, Andrés García, PhD1, Ankur Singh, PhD1 1Georgia Institute of Technology

  • 4:30 PM. 81. Novel Methacryloylated Food-Grade ECM for Tissue Engineering.Vinicius Marchiori da Silva1, Alan Brown1, Vipuil Kishore1 1Florida Institute of Technology

  • 4:45 PM. 82. Tunable polymer properties impact siRNA delivery to human articular chondroprogenitor cells.Phillip Hernandez1, Sophie Biegel1, Kenneth Weekes1, Robert Guldberg1, Danielle Benoit1 1University of Oregon

  • 5:00 PM. 83. Delivery of Peptide Coacervates to Form Stable Interaction Hubs in Cells.Wangjie Tu, MS1, Rachel Theisen, BS1, Pengfei Jin, BS1, David Chenoweth, PhD1, Amish Patel, PhD1, Matthew Good, PhD1 1University of Pennsylvania

  • Cyborg Mammalian Cells as Robust, Non-replicating Biosynthesis Micromachines.Luis Eduardo Contreras Llano1, Jared Lee-Kin1, Shahid Khan1, Aijun Wang1, Cheemeng Tan1 1University of California, Davis
    4:15 PM. 80.