Melody Swartz

About

Melody Swartz is the William B. Ogden Professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, where she also holds a joint appointment in the Ben May Department for Cancer Research. She obtained her BS from Johns Hopkins and her PhD from MIT, both in chemical engineering, and completed postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School and the Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Her career includes positions at Northwestern University in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where she was promoted to full professor and served as director of the Institute of Bioengineering. Trained as a bioengineer, Prof. Swartz employs quantitative approaches in immunobiology and physiology, including biotransport and biomechanics, to understand how the lymphatic system regulates immunity in homeostasis and disease, particularly in cancer and chronic inflammation. Her research focuses on elucidating and exploiting the roles of lymphatic function related to cancer and inflammatory diseases such as asthma, using interdisciplinary methods from bioengineering, immunobiology, physiology, cell biology, and biomechanics. Her lab investigates the immunological implications of lymphangiogenesis in tumors and chronic inflammatory conditions, develops novel strategies for targeting lymphatics and sentinel lymph nodes for immunotherapy, and builds physiologically relevant 3D model systems to study tumor and lymphatic…

Research topics

• Biology
• Immunology
• Cancer research
• Medicine
• Chemistry
• Virology
• Computational biology
• Biochemistry
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• Collagen-binding IL-12 enhances tumour inflammation and drives the complete remission of established immunologically cold mouse tumours

  Nature Biomedical Engineering · 2020-04-13 · 230 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Masking the immunotoxicity of interleukin-12 by fusing it with a domain of its receptor via a tumour-protease-cleavable linker

  Nature Biomedical Engineering · 2022 · 89 citations

  DOI

• MHC Class II Antigen Presentation by Lymphatic Endothelial Cells in Tumors Promotes Intratumoral Regulatory T cell–Suppressive Functions

  Cancer Immunology Research · 2021-05-05 · 83 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Several solid malignancies trigger lymphangiogenesis, facilitating metastasis. Tumor-associated lymphatic vessels significantly contribute to the generation of an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment (TME). Here, we have investigated the ability of tumoral lymphatic endothelial cells (LEC) to function as MHC class II–restricted antigen-presenting cells in the regulation of antitumor immunity. Using murine models of lymphangiogenic tumors engrafted under the skin, we have shown that…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Lymphatic endothelial cells prime naïve CD8+ T cells into memory cells under steady-state conditions

  Nature Communications · 2020-01-27 · 71 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) chemoattract naïve T cells and promote their survival in the lymph nodes, and can cross-present antigens to naïve CD8 + T cells to drive their proliferation despite lacking key costimulatory molecules. However, the functional consequence of LEC priming of CD8 + T cells is unknown. Here, we show that while many proliferating LEC-educated T cells enter early apoptosis, the remainders comprise a long-lived memory subset, with transcriptional, metabolic, a…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Polymersomes Decorated with the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Receptor-Binding Domain Elicit Robust Humoral and Cellular Immunity

  ACS Central Science · 2021 · 37 citations

  The COVID-19 pandemic underscores the need for rapid, safe, and effective vaccines. In contrast to some traditional vaccines, nanoparticle-based subunit vaccines are particularly efficient in trafficking antigens to lymph nodes, where they induce potent immune cell activation. Here, we developed a strategy to decorate the surface of oxidation-sensitive polymersomes with multiple copies of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein receptor-binding domain (RBD) to mimic the physical form of a virus particle. W…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01HL096539

  NIH · $1.5M · 2013

• Paradoxical roles of tumor lymphangiogenesis on tumor immunity and implications for immunotherapy - Resubmission 01

  NIH · $1.8M · 2018–2023

• NIH Grant R01HL075217

  NIH · $1.2M · 2008

Frequent coauthors

• Jeffrey A. Hubbell

  University of Chicago

  175 shared

• Lisa M. Coussens

  Oregon Health & Science University

  72 shared

• Noriho Iida

  Kanazawa University Hospital

  64 shared

• Edward W. Roberts

  64 shared

• Melissa H. Wong

  Oregon Health & Science University

  64 shared

• Yves A. DeClerck

  64 shared

• Sabina Sangaletti

  Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori

  64 shared

• Fiona E. Yull

  Vanderbilt University Medical Center

  64 shared

Education

• Postdoctoral Fellow, Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine

  Brigham and Women's Hospital

  1999

• PhD, Chemical Engineering

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  1998

• B.S., Chemical Engineering

  Johns Hopkins University

  1991

Awards & honors

• Elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2023
• Elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2020
• Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018
• Named a MacArthur Fellow in 2012

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Giulia Gallih-99
• Junhong Chenh-94
• Liang Jiangh-80