News

Hai-Quan Mao and his collaborators at Johns Hopkins conduct NIH-funded materials science research using mRNA and other advances to address urgent medical challenges like cancer, malaria, and nerve and tissue damage RNA medicine shows promise for training the body to recognize tumors and eliminate them, but a better delivery system is needed to activate the […]

Three Johns Hopkins experts discuss the potential of mRNA-powered therapeutics to produce lifesaving treatments and cures for a range of diseases, and why federal research cuts risk undermining U.S. scientific leadership in this emerging area In recent years, mRNA technology enabled the rapid development of vaccines to fight COVID-19, saving millions of lives. That same [...]

The immunoengineering field is transforming cancer, autoimmunity, regeneration, and transplantation treatments by combining the diverse and complex fields of engineering and immunology. On March 4, 2025, the Johns Hopkins Translational ImmunoEngineering Center hosted its inaugural symposium to highlight some of the latest advances in immunoengineering with a focus on translational aspects of the field. It [...]

Story by Johns Hopkins Medicine. A type of aggressive, treatment-resistant brain tumor has a distinct population of immune cells that support its growth, according to new research led by investigators at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center Bloomberg~Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Searching for subtypes of immune cells seen only in […]

Federal funding is enabling biomedical engineer Jamie Spangler and her team at Johns Hopkins to develop innovative treatments for autoimmune disorders, cancer, and other complex diseases Jamie Spangler oversees a lab of 33 scientists at Johns Hopkins who are developing new, targeted treatments that harness the power of the immune system. With the backing of the […]

Jordan Green, the Herschel L. Seder Professor of Biomedical Engineering, is among sixteen Hopkins faculty members selected, out of 135 applicants, for the inaugural cohort for the Provost’s Fellows for Public Engagement. The fellows will take part in a yearlong program designed to build their public engagement skills across a range of media platforms and audiences. Green currently […]

Mary Omotoso, a biomedical engineering PhD student, was a 2024 inductee into the university’s chapter of the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society. The Bouchet Society honors Edward Alexander Bouchet, who in 1876 became the first African American doctoral recipient in the United States. The society seeks to develop a network of pre-eminent scholars who exemplify academic and […]

The Johns Hopkins Center for Translational ImmunoEngineering, or JH-TIE, recently earned $6.4 million in continued funding over the next five years from the NIH’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). The grant is part of  NIBIB’s  National Centers for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NCBIB) program, and JH-TIE is the program’s first center to focus on […]

Immunoengineering research by Johns Hopkins biomedical engineers and JH-TIE researcher was recently featured on the cover of the journal JCI Insight. The article, “Engineered cytokine/antibody fusion proteins improve IL-2 delivery to pro-inflammatory cells and promote antitumor activity,” was selected and featured as the cover for the September 2024 issue. The cover art was illustrated by Ann Seliger, a recent […]

Si-Sam Kang, fourth year PhD student receives PhRMA Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship in drug delivery to improve adoptive cell therapy. Read the full story by PhRMA.

Story by Catherine Graham and posted on the Hub. Benjamin Biggs, Engr ’23, a second-year doctoral student in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, is among 50 exceptional STEM scholars selected to receive a 2024 Quad Fellowship. The Quad Fellowship provides awardees from Australia, India, Japan, the U.S., and some Southeast Asian countries with $40,000 in […]

Story by Kate Olsen and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering Targeted, biodegradable nanoparticles used in preclinical cancer treatment regimen Vaccines work by giving our immune system a ‘heads up’ about a known threat. They are traditionally given before we encounter a pathogen (such as the influenza virus), allowing our bodies to mount a better […]

Story by Johns Hopkins Medicine. Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers have developed a color-coded test that quickly signals whether newly developed nanoparticles — ultra small compartments designed to ferry medicines, vaccines and other therapies — deliver their cargo into target cells. Historically, nanoparticles have a very low delivery rate to the cytosol, the inside compartment of [...]

JH-TIE center director Jonathan Schneck discusses his group’s work on the development of a high-throughput system to analyze neoepitope-specific T-cell immune responses.

In a paper published in the September issue of Nano Letters, Hickey, et al. reported a series of technologies that streamline enrichment, expansion, and detection of a wide range of antigen-specific T cells for cancer, infectious disease, and autoimmunity. The authors developed a concept of “adaptive artificial antigen presenting cells,” which can target an array of T [...]

Story by Johns Hopkins Medicine Red blood cells not only carry oxygen from one part of the body to another, they also act as sponges in the circulatory system, soaking up toxins such as poisons shed from infections. The more red blood cells available in the blood system, the faster the recovery from toxin-related threats [...]

Story by Johns Hopkins Medicine Scientists at Johns Hopkins report they have designed and successfully tested an experimental, super small package able to deliver molecular signals that tag implanted human cancer cells in mice and make them visible for destruction by the animals' immune systems. The new method was developed, say the researchers, to deliver [...]

Story by Johns Hopkins Medicine Johns Hopkins researchers report that a type of biodegradable, lab-engineered nanoparticle they fashioned can successfully deliver a “suicide gene” to pediatric brain tumor cells implanted in the brains of mice. The poly(beta-amino ester) nanoparticles, known as PBAEs, were part of a treatment that also used a drug to kill the cells and [...]

Story by Johns Hopkins Medicine. Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine report they have created a tiny, nanosize container that can slip inside cells and deliver protein-based medicines and gene therapies of any size — even hefty ones attached to the gene-editing tool called CRISPR. If their creation – constructed of a biodegradable polymer — passes [...]

This press release is by Johns Hopkins Medicine and appeared in the Newsroom on November 13, 2019.  If the saying that two heads are better than one is true, then joining two fields of science may be better than one to spur more advances in medicine. With a $6.7 million, five-year grant from the National Institutes of [...]