Best wishes to Matt Wolf on his next adventure!
Matt joined the Elisseeff lab in 2014, bringing expertise in extracellular matrix (ECM) biomaterials for tissue engineering. He discovered that the same pro-regenerative environment generated by ECM biomaterials to encourage tissue healing also enabled the immune system to kill cancer cells. Cancer killing by immune cells in the scaffold environment was enhanced by checkpoint blockade immunotherapy, connecting fields of tissue engineering, surgical oncology, and cancer immunotherapy. As an independent investigator, Matt will investigate immunomodulatory biomaterials in cancer therapy. His research will study how the host response to biomaterial implants affects cancer immune surveillance, and using tumor ECM to model complex immunotherapy treatments in a dish.