Advancing the frontiers of design-driven medicine: engineering programmable cell-based therapies and diagnostics

Engineered cell-based therapies are a transformative medical frontier. Employing living cells to perform sophisticated and complex tasks within the human body has already revolutionized the treatment of some cancers, and the prospect of extending these capabilities to promote health in myriad ways is now within reach. However, realizing the full potential of this approach will necessitate the development of improved engineering tools, ranging from improved biological technologies to computational and conceptual frameworks to guide their deployment. I will present recent advances made toward achieving the vision of design-driven engineering of novel mammalian cellular functions. This presentation will include recently developed "parts" for composing gene expression functions in mammalian cells, computational approaches for design-driven engineering of new parts such as biosensors, and computational tools and design principles that enable the efficient generation of novel functional programs that perform in a manner that is customizable, predictable, and robust. Each of these will be presented in the context of our primary motivation application—engineered cell-based devices for improving cancer treatment.