Dr. Delcassian has always been a passionate chemist- she started conducting her first experiments after receiving a chemistry set at the age of 11! She went on to study Organic Chemistry as an undergraduate, and then worked in industry designing new drugs to treat HIV in a commercial pharmaceutical company as part of a Research and Development team. After that, she became interested in how chemistry could be used to answer questions in biology. She moved to Imperial College London to study for a PhD, where she developed chemical tools to better understand how human immune cells function and respond to disease. She used her chemistry skills to develop new biomaterials that help to train the immune system, and developed a new understanding of how the immune system responds to materials at the nano-, micro- and macro-scale. Since then, she’s worked in several countries to chemically control the immune system, engineering therapies to re-direct the immune system. She has won a number of international awards and Fellowships in recognition for her work at the cutting edge of immunoengineering. Currently, she works with scientists, engineers and medics to design new therapies to tackle some of the most difficult immunology problems in diseases ranging from cancer to organ rejection.
Working in between chemistry, biology, immunology, engineering and materials, Dr. Delcassian’s work is focused on using chemistry to develop new materials that can direct the immune system. She is a passionate advocate for the importance of applying chemistry to lots of different disciplines, especially in innovation for health. In her spare time, she is committed to educating the general public about how chemistry can be used to answer important questions about biology, and inspiring the next generation of chemists to think about how chemistry can be applied to help people live longer and healthier lives.
