Professor James R. Heath, Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, USA
We are very happy to announce a new thematic collection in Lab on a Chip on cancer immunotherapy with Professor James R. Heath, President and Professor at Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, acting as Thought leader.
In his recent Editorial published in Lab on a Chip, Professor James R. Heath wrote “The rapid development of cancer immunotherapies over the past 5-10 years is not only revolutionizing clinical cancer care, but it is also making the immunotherapy field a proving ground for many new measurement and computational technologies. An understanding of the technological needs of this field can be gleaned by placing those needs within the context of state-of-the-art treatments. […]
The level of personalisation that is now being tested in the clinic hardly was unthinkable just a decade ago. The newness of personalized cancer immunotherapies means that, as a rule, they are still extremely expensive. An urgent and unmet need is to develop technologies that can assist in the democratization of such treatments.[…]
A unique characteristic of the biology of immuno-oncology is that it can invariably be mined to generate new hypotheses for how to improve treatments. Such hypotheses might include approaches for improved bioengineering of T cells, or the potential identification of new immune checkpoints, etc. While this characteristic gives cancer immunotherapy a very bright future, it also means that finding technologies that can rapidly and inexpensively validate or negate such hypotheses is an urgent and rapidly expanding need”
We welcome primary research and review content relating to how lab-on-a-chip technologies can be developed to address these and related challenges for inclusion in a thematic collection in Lab on a Chip focused on immuno-engineering and immuno-therapy. This collection is now open for submissions and we are looking for submissions into 2020.
Please note that all submitted manuscripts will be subject to peer review in accordance with the journal’s normal standards.
Lab on a Chip publishes significant and original work related to miniaturisation, at the micro- and nano-scale, of interest to a multidisciplinary readership. The journal seeks to publish work at the interface between physical technological advancements and high impact applications that are of direct interest to a broad audience.
We have compiled a collection of recent papers and reviews published in Lab on a Chip on this topic. These articles can be read at rsc.li/immunotherapy and are available free to access* until the 15th November 2019. A couple of highlights from this collections are shown below.
Graphical Abstract from Segaliny, Zhao, et al., 2018 (DOI: 10.1039/C8LC00818C)
Functional TCR T cell screening using single-cell droplet microfluidics
Aude I. Segaliny, Weian Zhao, et al.
MATE-Seq: microfluidic antigen-TCR engagement sequencing
Alphonsus H. C. Ng, James R. Heath et al.
If you’re interested in contributing to this collection,
please contact the Lab on a Chip Editorial Office.
