Employing nanomedicine in inflammatory diseases

In this thesis, I explore the application of nanomedicines targeting the innate immune system in atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease and other immune-mediated disorders. My coauthors and I developed and applied high-density lipoprotein (HDL)-inspired nanoformulations that accumulate in hematopoietic organs and have a high affinity for myeloid cells. These nanobiologics are versatile vehicles for diagnostic and therapeutic applications. For example, they can be employed as magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents to study the innate immune response following myocardial infarction or can be used as a treatment to prevent allograft rejection. Moreover, nanobiologic treatment can effectively reduce atherosclerotic plaque inflammation.
This thesis shows the challenges, solutions and future possibilities of nanomedicine’s immunotherapeutic applications. It also highlights the need of a multidisciplinary approach. The presented studies are the result of collaborative efforts between different fields, i.e., (nano)chemistry, biomedical engineering, pathology, experimental medicine and medical imaging. Importantly, immunology was a central theme in this research. Together, our unique approach not only showed the potential of nanomedicine as an immunotherapy modality, it also generated novel immunoimaging approaches, yielded fundamental insights in immunopathologic mechanisms and laid the groundwork for translational efforts towards making these novel therapeutics available for patients.