Cellular immunotherapy, and in particular adoptive cell therapy, has proven to be an efficient treatment to combat cancer, and a number of autoimmune and infectious diseases. This therapy uses the body's own immune system to fight disease. Specifically, T cells or lymphocytes, part of this immune system, are especially active against cancer. These are extracted from the tumour or genetically modified to recognise it, cultured and expanded in vitro, and finally reintroduced into the patient.

Currently, the immune cells needed for these therapies are obtained by cultivating them in suspension. In previous studies, ICMAB researchers had already proposed using artificial matrices that replicate the body's lymph nodes, where T cells are normally activated, as there is increasing evidence of the positive influence this immune microenvironment has on the cells that are obtained. Of all natural and synthetic hydrogels tested in the matrix, PEG-heparin hydrogels have been shown to be the most suitable for improving the creation rate of new human T cells.

In the article “3D Printing as a Strategy to Scale-Up Biohybrid Hydrogels for T Cell Manufacture”, published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, the group of researchers has successfully printed PEG-heparin hydrogels in 3 dimensions. “Being able to 3D print our lymph node-inspired hydrogels brings the technology closer to clinical use, ensuring it is a scalable system, and it paves the way for new applications in tissue engineering,” says Judith Guasch, senior scientist at ICMAB. “The next step is to test T cells produced in vivo models.” Miguel Ángel Mateos, researcher at the Bioengineering Institute of Technology at UIC Barcelona, adds that, “The printing of these hydrogels has been a challenge, but we have managed to obtain constructs with the right structure for the activation of T cells”.