About the Special Issue

The immune system plays a pivotal role in human health and disease, and its dysregulation drives the aetiology of cancer, autoimmune diseases and inflammation diseases. The immuno-materials represent a relatively new niche of biomaterials that combine materials design with immunology for manipulating immune cells ex vivo or in the human body to provide new treatment options for patients, which could cover research fields including cancer immunotherapy, vaccines, drug and gene delivery, bioactive materials, immune homeostasis, and so on so forth. 

A fundamental basis underlying immuno-materials is the understanding the basic process of how the immune cells recognize the pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) and damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) through the pattern recognition receptors (PRRs), and thus developing materials with patterned structures for targeted and controlled regulation of the immune system. This needs an interdisciplinary knowledge on materials design, precise synthesis, novel techniques in exploring the events on the biointerface between materials and immune cells, which definitely needs a lot more input and attentions to be paid on.

As a result, this collection aims to collect more discussions and opinions, as well as new progress in this specific research field, and paves a better understanding and outcomes in the next 10 years. 

Keywords: Immunology, Materials, Immune homeostasis, Biointerface

Call for Papers