Institute of Technology faculty working at the forefront of nanotechnology show how the science of the small has a big impact on our everyday lives

by richard broderick
photos by jayme halbritter

Andrew Taton: Tricking T cells

For many, the word "nanotechnology" evokes ideas of computers and other electronic devices. However, at the University, the search for nano applications also extends into medicine.


Andrew Taton, assistant professor of chemistry, is working to find general chemistries that connect nano-objects to biological molecules. He is working to create a vaccine that uses nanoparticles coated with proteins that will fool T cells into thinking the particles are cancer cells.

“That should come as no surprise,” observes Andrew
Taton, an associate professor of chemistry. “The
University has a fantastic history of taking materials
and applying them to medicine.”

“It’s only natural,” he said, “for us to try to make
the connection with biology and medicine on the
nano scale, too.”

In taking up that challenge, Taton and a cross-disciplinary
team have set a highly ambitious research goal: to create a cancer vaccine that uses nanoparticles coated with proteins that will essentially fool T cells, one of the body’s main lines of immunoresponse to antigens, into thinking the particles are cancer cells. The objective? “Getting the immune system to respond to cancer, and to remember it.” Taton said.

Vaccines make the immune system respond to
a threat that’s not really there—like how the harmless
cowpox virus is used as a vaccine against deadly
smallpox. If all goes well, the immune system also remembers the threat, and fights it long into the future.

“We want to create nanoparticles that will trigger an immune response to cancer cells,” Taton said.

The tough part of that task is that cancer cells look a lot like normal cells—and training T cells to distinguish between the two is difficult. Taton’s hope is that by attaching cancer-related proteins to the nanoparticles, he can send T cells off hunting for cancer cells that may have eluded detection—before they can develop into tumors or metastasize.

To date, Taton and his collaborators have made nanoparticles that are coated with a model protein, and then combined these particles in a dish with T cells from mice that have been genetically modified to produce only T cells that respond to this particular kind of protein.


Above are brightly colored test tubes containing organic molecules used to connect proteins to nanoparticles. Taton is creating nanoparticles that will trigger an immune response to cancer cells.

Preliminary results are good so far. The T cells are binding with nanoparticles and displaying other signs typical of an immune response, like T cell division.

From there, it’s a big jump to develop nanoparticles that will evoke the same response from T-cells designed to respond to cancer. Taton is optimistic. An ideal cancer vaccine would be one that would immunize the body forever. Even if the research team finds something not quite that definitive, Taton will count it a success.

“The best immunotherapies trigger a response where we retain T cells that will respond if you are exposed to the same antigens,” he said. “Even a cancer vaccine that only triggers a short-term response— like in a melanoma patient who might have migrating cancer cells, or a patient in post-operative treatment after cancer surgery when the risk of metastasis
is highest—would benefit from a vaccine that might, say, trigger a seven-day response