Chao Ma, PhD

Chao Ma is an early-stage investigator and assistant staff in the Center for Immunotherapy and Precision Immuno-Oncology at Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute. His research interests lie in the interdisciplinary space at the convergence of engineering, biology, and medicine, and are unified around his expertise to establish bioinspired engineering systems for the control of cell fate and tissue function, to gain new insights into various physiological and pathophysiological processes in the body, to provide multiscale tissue engineering methods and therapeutic screening solutions for biomedical, pharmaceutical, and translational applications, and to impact the future of research, medicine, and education. Ma's recent research progress has established a line of novel, integrated microfluidic-based microphysiological systems that reconstitute the in vivo pathology of diverse tumor niches (i.e., leukemia and glioblastoma) for in vitro screening of optimal chemotherapy and/or immunotherapy, such as immune checkpoint inhibition and cell-based therapy. These efforts have led to publications in Science Advances, eLife, Journal for ImmunoTherapy of Cancer, Cancer Cell, and Nature Immunology where on-chip and in silicon biomimetic tumor models were developed to understand resistance to cancer treatments and screening for combinational therapies and CAR T cell immunotherapies. The overarching research goals of his laboratory are to develop and leverage a multidisciplinary approach that combines engineering with biology and medicine for tissue engineering, disease modeling, and therapy screening, which aims to positively impact human healthcare and wellness.

Chao Ma Laboratory