Fighting Tumor Defenses With Engineering and Immunotherapy
BioE/Physics Distinguished Professor Herbert Levine gives the plenary lecture at the Global Summit on Mechanobiology and Mechanomedicine hosted by Northeastern’s Institute for Mechanobiology. He discusses how mechanobiology seeks to overcome the physical barriers around tumors to improve immunotherapy effectiveness.
This article originally appeared on Northeastern Global News. It was published by Cynthia McCormick Hibbert. Main photo: 03/06/25 – BOSTON, MA. – Prof. Herbert Levine says mechanobiology could hold the key to helping immune therapy succeed in combating certain solid cancer tumors. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
The physics of cancer: Fighting tumor defenses with engineering and immunotherapy
In the world of cancer treatment, think of some types of immunotherapy as stealth weapons in which immune cells known as T-cells are taught to recognize cancer and fight malignant tumors.
But what if the T-cells run up against a wall or ring of extracellular material around the tumor that prevents them from invading?
“This is a physical phenomenon,” says Herbert Levine, Northeastern University distinguished professor of physics and bioengineering.
“Cancer tumors very often have a physical barrier surrounding the entire tumor, a sort of capsule or sheet which tries to prevent the immune cells from entering,” he says.
It’s a scenario that occurs all too often when treating many types of solid tumor cancers including but not limited to melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer and triple-negative breast cancer, he says
“Immunotherapy has been highlighted as a great accomplishment, but if you actually look at the numbers, the percentage of people, the percentage of cancer types for which it really works is still pretty limited,” Levine says.
The growing field of mechanobiology hopes to overcome treatment hurdles by partnering biologists with engineers and physicists who understand physical barriers and how they interact with cells, says Levine, who spoke at a two-day Global Summit on Mechanobiology and Mechanomedicine on Northeastern’s Boston campus.
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Herbert Levine, university distinguished professor, delivers the plenary lecture at the Global Summit on Mechanobiology and Mechanomedicine. He says medicine can benefit from physicists and engineers working with biologists on hard to treat cancers and other diseases. Photos by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
Traditionally, medical and biology experts studying genes and mutation and causative factors such as cigarette smoking have not focused on this type of physical effect, Levine says.
Physical forces and the interactions of different cells with each other are the “sort of things physicists and engineers typically think about,” he says.
“Mechanobiology is an attempt to meld those two different ways of thinking about the problem into one.”
The idea is to “create a more global understanding of the limitations of current therapies and what some of the ways forward might be.”
Levine’s own interest is in the tumor microenvironment, but he says mechanobiology extends beyond oncology to fields such as cardiology and regenerative medicine.
“It’s a broad undertaking. It’s not meant to be focused on a specific problem,” he says.
Read full story at Northeastern Global News