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The development of an effective HIV vaccine has been ongoing. HIV sequence diversity and immunodominance are major obstacles in the design of an effective vaccine. Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) developed a novel vaccine strategy combining both DNA and mRNA vaccination to induce an effective immune response. This combination strategy could also be used to develop vaccines against cancer or other infectious diseases (ex. SARS-CoV-2). 

Tailoring the best treatments to cancer patients remains a highly important endeavor in the oncology field. However, personalized treatment courses are challenging to determine, and technologies or methods that can successfully be employed for precision oncology are lacking.

Virus entry into a susceptible host cell is the first step in the formation of all viral diseases. Controlling viral infections by disrupting viral entry is advantageous for antibody-mediated neutralization by the host’s immune system and as a preventive and therapeutic antiviral strategy. Plant-derived carbohydrate-binding proteins (lectins) have emerged as a new class of antiviral biologics by taking advantage of a unique glycosylation pattern only found on the surface of viruses.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a worldwide public health crisis with over 100 million confirmed cases and 2.4 million deaths as of February 2021. COVID-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. SARS-COV-2 infects hosts via its spike (S) protein. The S protein contains the receptor binding domain (RBD) that binds to the angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor on human cells to facilitate viral entry and infection. There are few therapeutics available for COVID-19 patients that directly target SARS-CoV-2.

Adoptive T-cell therapy (ACT) utilizes tumor-reactive T cells to induce disease remission. While ACT has been used effectively to treat metastatic melanoma and certain epithelial cancers, most patients do not respond to treatment. Although the mechanisms underlying this variable response to therapy are not fully elucidated, the phenotype of the adoptively transferred cell is known to be a key determinant of treatment efficacy.

Mutation of amino acid 61of the neuroblastoma rat sarcoma viral oncogene homologue (NRAS) is a known driver of oncogenesis in melanoma. Glutamine (Q) to lysine (K) mutation at this position of NRAS is prevalent in approximately 10% of all melanoma cases and associated with aggressive tumors and low patient survival. Therefore, Q61K mutated NRAS is an important candidate for targeted therapies, including cellular immunotherapy. 

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a complex mixture of cell types whose interactions affect tumor growth and clinical outcome. Recent studies using fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) and single-cell RNA sequencing (RNAseq) to elucidate tissue composition and cell-cell interactions in the TME led to improved biomarkers of patient response and new treatment opportunities. However, the use of FACS is limited to simultaneously measuring the expression of a few protein markers, whereas the use of single-cell RNAseq has been limited due to cost and scarcity of fresh tumor biopsies.

Programed Death-Ligand 1 (PD-L1, also known as B7-H1 or CD274) is a cell surface protein that binds to Programmed Cell Death Protein 1 (PD-1, also known as CD279). An imbalance in PD-1/PD-L1 activity contributes to cancer immune escape.  PD-1 is expressed on the surface of antigen-stimulated T cells. The interaction between PD-L1 and PD-1 negatively regulates T cell-mediated immune responses. It has been suggested that disrupting the PD-L1/PD-1 signaling pathway can be used to treat cancers. The aberrant expression of PD-L1 on multiple tumor types supports this suggestion.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections remain a pandemic, most prevalent in Africa and the Americas. Anti-retroviral treatments have been effective in preventing spread of the virus and active outbreaks of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). However, the development and deployment of an effective vaccine would provide long-lasting protection and alleviate the need to depend heavily on prevention methods that require continued access and adherence.

Three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures systems are important for studying cell biology because they provide in vivo-like microenvironments more physiologically relevant than two-dimensional (2D) culture systems. In 3D culture systems, cells are grown in culture matrixes and turn into spheroids and organoids later processed for downstream analysis by microscopy and histology techniques. The processing of 3D cultures for analysis by microscopy or histology is laborious and time-consuming due to incompatibility of the 3D culture vessels and the microscopy and pathology blocks.