Fall 2025 Grantee Highlight:
Eric Mazur

Eric Mazur, PhD

Professor of Physics and of Applied Physics, Harvard University

Adoptive T cell therapy is a personalized immunotherapy in which a patient’s own T cells are collected, activated, and engineered to recognize tumor-specific targets. Once reinfused, these modified T cells can drive complete and durable regression in several advanced cancers. Despite these successes, broader implementation remains limited by a central challenge: achieving efficient and safe intracellular delivery of genetic material into T cells.

Eric Mazur’s research group is developing vector-free intracellular delivery technologies that use precisely controlled, laser-activated surfaces to introduce genetic cargo into cells. The team has also established a platform to examine how T cell membranes are disrupted and subsequently repaired following laser-driven perturbations, providing new insight into membrane dynamics that are difficult to study with conventional methods.

In collaboration with Harvard colleagues Samir Mitragotri and Maxim Prigozhin, this project aims to advance the engineering of therapeutic T cells while deepening fundamental understanding of T cell membrane biology. By integrating innovative delivery tools with mechanistic biological studies, the team seeks to enable scalable, next-generation cell therapies capable of reaching a broader range of patients.