Kunal Pednekar is a PhD student at the Department of Advanced Organ bioengineering and Therapeutics. He obtained his bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Mumbai after which he moved to The Netherlands in 2018 to pursue his master studies. In 2021, he obtained his master degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Twente. During his master degree, he performed an internship at the Department of Nanomedicine and Drug Targeting, University of Groningen, where he studied the interaction of targeted liposomes with the cancer-associated fibroblasts in pancreatic cancers. He performed his master thesis at the Department of Advanced Organ bioengineering and Therapeutics, University of Twente. During which, he developed a novel 3D model to mimic the tumor stroma of pancreatic tumor in which he studied the interaction of cancer-associated fibroblasts with tumor cells. Furthermore, the 3D model showed resemblance to human pancreatic tumors in morphology, transcriptomics, and resistance towards nanotherapeutics. This work was published as a first author in the Cancers journal. With these results he obtained his masters with a grade ‘9’. He was also awarded with the Twente Graduate School bridging funding before starting his PhD. 

Currently, in his PhD, he focuses on targeting tumor-associated macrophages in both primary and metastatic tumors. By specifically targeting these cells, he aims to reprogram the pro-tumoral macrophages into the anti-tumoral phenotype and to enhance the effect of immunotherapy. Along with his work, he has also contributed to many collaborations with international research groups. In these collaborations, he has prepared 3D spheroids to test effect of siRNA-delivering nanoparticles (Prof. Raemdonck, Ghent University) and to examine uptake of exosome-based nanovesicles (Prof. Morille, University of Montpellier). Moreover, he is also involved in co-supervising a number of bachelor and master students, out of which four students have already graduated in their respective programs. He has also been presenting his work in various international conferences including the Controlled Release Society (CRS) annual meeting, Nanomedicine meets the Tumor MicroEnvironment (NanoTME), Phospholipid Research Center symposium, and European Symposium on Controlled Drug Delivery (ESCDD). Apart from working as a PhD student, he participates in the team of Early Career Scientist Committee of the CRS BeNeLux and France local chapter.

Most solid tumors have suppressed immune microenvironment which allows tumor cells to escape from the immune attack [1]. Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), one of the most important cell types in the tumor microenvironment (TME), induces immune suppression by inhibiting adaptive immune cells such as T-cells [2, 3]. TAMs can be divided into M1 type (anti-tumoral) and M2 type (pro-tumoral), while M2-TAMs comprise the major population of a tumor. M2-TAMs secrete factors suppressing proliferation and migration of CD8+ cytotoxic T-cells, which makes immune checkpoint inhibitors such as anti-PD1 ineffective. Re-programming M2-TAMs into M1 phenotype can be an interesting approach to re-activate CD8+ T-cells. Recently, we have developed novel “tail-flipping” nanoliposomes that can specifically target M2-TAMs in vivo [2] which could be used to re-program M2-TAMs into M1-type.