Developing safe and effective therapeutics for conditions such as gynecologic cancers, pregnancy disorders, endometriosis, and autoimmune disorders remains a significant global challenge due to their complex immunopathology. While chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) cell therapies have demonstrated clinical success for treating blood-based cancers, the Swingle lab harnesses these technologies to design either immunostimulatory or immunosuppressive therapeutics for emerging applications.

The Swingle lab also works to engineer and evaluate novel nucleic acid-based vaccines for infectious diseases. In particular, we are interested in developing vaccine platforms that have the potential to enable more durable protection against viral infection than the current mRNA vaccines. Additionally, we will investigate the safety and efficacy of these vaccine technologies in the context of pregnancy. During pregnancy, to avoid immune activation and rejection of the paternally-derived antigens from the fetus and placenta, the body’s adaptive immune system changes vastly compared to the non-pregnant state. The Swingle lab will study and harness these immunological changes to intentionally design vaccines for use during pregnancy