O Speaker: Prof. Huishan Li

O Affiliation: Dept. of Bio & Brain Engineering, KAIST

O Date: June 04, 2025

O Start Time: 4:00 PM

ABSTRACT:

Synthetic biology provides the tools to reconfigure immune cell behavior, opening pathways to cell-based living therapies. An example of this innovation can be seen in the advancements of CAR-T immunotherapy, where T cells are repurposed to combat cancer using designed receptors. Despite the existing success of CAR-T therapy, challenges such as severe side effects due to off-target toxicity, over-activation, and limited effectiveness against certain types of tumors persist. These hurdles have motivated synthetic biology to develop circuit designs that equip immune cells with innovative therapeutic capacities and precise, context-specific control over therapeutic functions. 

In this talk, I will introduce two distinct immune cell engineering strategies that utilize small molecule-gated synthetic circuits to confer novel biological functions. I will highlight how these approaches address existing challenges and represent promising directions for the next generation of immunotherapies.

* The seminar will be held offline and online[https://kaist.zoom.us/j/86770940131] simultaneously.

* Closed Caption interpretation service (English) available online (service provided by Zoom)