David M. Truong’s Programmable Regenerative Immunity Lab is doing promising research that could open up new possibilities for Alzheimer’s patients

Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering David Truong and his research group are working to create programmable macrophage–neuron interfaces able to reduce the inflammation associated with Alzheimer’s disease and repair damaged neural connections.

Alzheimer’s involves complex immune–neural interactions that drive inflammation, synaptic loss, and cognitive decline, Truong explains, and current therapies target only isolated pathological features, failing to address the broader breakdown in neuroimmune signaling; he intends to address those shortcomings by engineering macrophage-specific circuits that secrete therapeutic payloads in response to small molecule inducers, enabling tunable neuroimmune repair.

The project builds upon Truong’s recent NIH-funded work, which uses engineered immune cells to target and remove amyloid plaques (one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease) when delivered through the bloodstream, where they cross the blood-brain barrier.

The immune cells used in his lab are “off-the-shelf,” meaning that they do not need to be taken from a patient but can instead be manufactured and prepared in advance; they are created from human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), a renewable source of cells that can be genetically modified in the lab.  

His new project recently won “Early Stage” support from NYU’s Discovery Research Fund for Human Health, a program launched in late 2023 to aid faculty members in addressing significant medical challenges. (In its first full year, it provided support to teams researching interventions for diabetes prevention, improvements to targeted cancer therapies, and advanced nanofabrication techniques to enable the rapid detection of multiple pathogens, among other projects.)

Truong — whose laurels include a New Innovator Award from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a Delil Nasser Award for Professional Development from the Genetics Society of America, and a National Institutes of Health Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award — envisions eventually creating an overall framework for regenerative neuroimmune therapies. “We may one day see even broader applications in neurodegeneration, immune dysfunction, and human brain repair,” he predicts.