About

Joel Collier is the Theodore Kennedy Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Duke University. His research focuses on the design of biomaterials for a range of biomedical applications, with a particular emphasis on understanding and controlling adaptive immune responses. The materials studied in his lab are primarily created from molecular assemblies such as proteins, peptides, or bioconjugates that self-organize into functional structures including nanofibers, gels, and particles. This approach enables the development of novel biomaterials that can interact with the immune system in controlled ways to advance biomedical science and therapeutic strategies.

Research topics

• Immunology
• Chemistry
• Biochemistry
• Medicine
• Materials science
• Nanotechnology
• Virology
• Biology
• Organic chemistry
• Pharmacology
• Cell biology

Selected publications

• Presentation of hemagglutinin on adjuvant-bearing self-assembling peptide nanofibers increases heterologous responses against influenza

  Acta Biomaterialia · 2025-11-20 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Immunomodulatory biomaterials for treating chronic inflammation at mucosal sites

  npj Biomedical Innovations. · 2025-12-12

  reviewOpen accessSenior author

  Biomaterials are increasingly sought as central components of new medical technologies for inflammatory conditions because they serve a range of functions from inert carriers of anti-inflammatory molecules to active engagers of the immune system. Unique challenges presented by diseases of mucosal tissues necessitate biomaterial designs that can circumvent the mucosal barrier and engage tissue-specific immune cells. This review will describe recent advances in biomaterials for treating specific mucosal inflammatory diseases.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Differential Sensitivity to Interepitope Spacing in Mast Cells and B Cells Enables Design of Hypoallergenic Allergen Vaccine Immunogens

  ACS Nano · 2025-04-20

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Therapeutic allergen vaccine immunogens can trigger IgE-mediated mast cell activation, resulting in allergic reactions. Here, we report on a mode of hypoallergenic immunogen design that enables immunization against IgE-reactive peptide B cell epitopes by optimizing the distance between epitopes. Using DNA-based model immunogens, we show that mast cells and B cells exhibit idiosyncratic sensitivity to interepitope spacing, with mast cell activation being dampened by high interepitope spacing while B cells remain responsive to identical immunogen configurations. To exploit this finding, we construct hypoallergenic immunogens based on supramolecular peptide nanofibers with ultralow epitope density that, when used as an allergen vaccine, raise protective allergen-neutralizing IgG antibody responses. This study provides a proof-of-concept for a mode of hypoallergenic immunogen design based on nanoscale control of the distances between IgE-reactive epitopes, which may enable allergen vaccination against IgE-reactive epitope targets in the absence of allergic reactogenicity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Supramolecular Peptide Self-Assemblies Facilitate Oral Immunization

  ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering · 2024-04-16 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Oral immunization is a promising strategy for preventing and treating gastrointestinal (GI) infections and diseases, as it allows for direct access to the disease site. To elicit immune responses within the GI tract, however, there are many obstacles that oral vaccines must surmount, including proteolytic degradation and thick mucus barriers. Here, we employed a modular self-assembling peptide nanofiber platform to facilitate oral immunization against both peptide and small molecule epitopes. Synthesizing nanofibers with d-amino acids rendered them resistant to proteases in vitro, whereas l-amino acid nanofibers were rapidly degraded. Additionally, the inclusion of peptide sequences rich in proline, alanine, and serine (PAS), increased nanofiber muco-penetration, and accelerated nanofiber transport through the GI tract. Oral immunization with PASylated nanofibers and mucosal adjuvant generated local and systemic immune responses to a peptide epitope but only for l-amino acid nanofibers. Further, we were able to apply this design to also enable oral immunization against a small molecule epitope and illustrated the therapeutic and prophylactic effectiveness of these immunizations in mouse models of colitis. These findings demonstrate that supramolecular peptide self-assemblies have promise as oral vaccines and immunotherapies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Tuning Helical Peptide Nanofibers as a Sublingual Vaccine Platform for a Variety of Peptide Epitopes

  Advanced Healthcare Materials · 2024-12-15 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Mucosal immune responses to vaccination are essential for achieving full protection against pathogens entering their host at mucosal sites. However, traditional parenteral immunization routes commonly fail to raise significant mucosal immunity. Sublingual immunization is a promising alternative delivery route to raise robust immune responses both systemically and at mucosal sites, and nanomaterial-based subunit vaccine platforms offer opportunities for raising epitope-specific responses. Here, sublingual immunization is reported using the Coil29 platform of coiled-coil self-assembling peptide nanofibers. The successful immunization with epitopes of varying physicochemical properties by including mucus-modulating components - namely sequences of proline, alanine, and serine (PAS) is demonstrated. PASylation is shown to decrease mucin complexation and increase epithelial penetration in vitro, enabling sublingual immunization against a variety of selected peptide epitopes in vivo. Coil29 fibers are also readily formed into tablets for solid-state dosing formulations and maintain their immunogenicity in this state. Previous sublingual peptide nanofiber immunotherapies have been based on different structures, such as highly stable β-sheets. The present work demonstrates that alternatively folded structures such as α-helical nanofibers can also be rendered sublingually immunogenic, enabling immunization with a variety of peptide epitopes and offering additional ways to specify mucus interactions, delivery state, dosing, and formulation.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Anti‐Cytokine Active Immunotherapy Based on Supramolecular Peptides for Alleviating IL‐1β‐Mediated Inflammation

  Advanced Healthcare Materials · 2024-08-07 · 8 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  IL-1β is a principal proinflammatory cytokine underlying multiple local and systemic chronic inflammatory conditions including psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, and type 2 diabetes. Passive immunotherapies and biologic drugs targeting IL-1β, while offering significant clinical benefit, nevertheless have limitations such as significant non-response rates, induction of anti-drug antibodies, and high costs. Here, an active immunotherapy raising antibody responses against IL-1β employing self-assembling peptide nanofibers is described. The nanofibers contain defined quantities of B-cell epitopes from IL-1β and exogenous T helper epitopes and employ the Q11 self-assembling peptide platform. Without adjuvant, the nanofibers raised durable anti-IL-1β antibody responses that inhibit IL-1β activity in vitro and in vivo. In a mouse model of imiquimod-induced psoriasis, prophylactic immunizations with the nanofibers diminished symptoms of epidermal thickening. This therapeutic effect is associated with biasing the immune response toward an anti-inflammatory IgG1/Th2 phenotype and a lowered expression of proinflammatory genes in the skin. Further, anti-IL-1β nanofibers induced therapeutic immunosuppressive CD62L+ Treg cells. This technology represents a potential alternative for passive immunotherapies and other biologics for treating chronic inflammatory conditions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Multi‐Target Peptide Nanofiber Immunotherapy Diminishes Complement Anaphylatoxin Activity in Acute Inflammation

  Advanced Healthcare Materials · 2024-10-30 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The anaphylatoxins C3a and C5a are products of the complement cascade that play important and interrelated roles in health and disease. Both are potential targets for anti-inflammatory active immunotherapies in which a patient's own immune system is stimulated to produce therapeutic immune responses against problematic self-molecules. However, the complex and time-dependent interrelations between the two molecules make dual targeting challenging. To investigate a dual-target active immunotherapy against C3a and C5a and to systematically study the effect of varied degrees of responses against both targets, the study employed self-assembled peptide immunogens capable of displaying a broad range of epitope compositions and Design-of-Experiments (DoE) approaches. Peptide nanofibers contained B-cell epitopes of C3a and C5a in defined quantities, and intranasal immunization raised systemic and mucosal immunity against each target. In a lipopolysaccharide-induced model of sepsis, increasing anti-C5a responses are protective, whereas increasing anti-C3a responses are detrimental, and survival rates are negatively correlated with anti-C3a/anti-C5a IgG titer ratio. This work highlights the interplay between the two molecules by making use of a modular, defined, and easily adjusted biomaterial-based active immunotherapy platform.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Next-Generation Vaccine Development with Nanomaterials: Recent Advances, Possibilities, and Challenges

  Annual Review of Biomedical Engineering · 2024-07-03 · 23 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Nanomaterials are becoming important tools for vaccine development owing to their tunable and adaptable nature. Unique properties of nanomaterials afford opportunities to modulate trafficking through various tissues, complement or augment adjuvant activities, and specify antigen valency and display. This versatility has enabled recent work designing nanomaterial vaccines for a broad range of diseases, including cancer, inflammatory diseases, and various infectious diseases. Recent successes of nanoparticle vaccines during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have fueled enthusiasm further. In this review, the most recent developments in nanovaccines for infectious disease, cancer, inflammatory diseases, allergic diseases, and nanoadjuvants are summarized. Additionally, challenges and opportunities for clinical translation of this unique class of materials are discussed.

  PublisherDOI

• Self-Assembling Allergen Vaccine Platform Raises Therapeutic Allergen-Specific IgG Responses without Induction of Systemic Allergic Responses

  ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering · 2024-02-17 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Allergen immunotherapies are often successful at desensitizing allergic patients but can require life-long dosing and suffer from frequent adverse events including instances of systemic anaphylaxis, leading to poor patient compliance and high cost. Allergen vaccines, in turn, can generate more durable immunological allergen desensitization with far fewer doses. However, like immunotherapies, allergen vaccines are often highly reactogenic in allergic patients, hampering their use in therapeutic settings. In this work, we utilize a peptide-based self-assembling nanofiber platform to design allergen vaccines against allergen B-cell epitopes that do not elicit systemic anaphylaxis when administered subcutaneously to allergic mice. We show that, in contrast to protein vaccines, nanofiber vaccines prevent leakage of allergen material into the vascular compartment, a feature that likely underpins their reduced systemic reactogenicity. Further, we show that our allergen vaccine platform elicits therapeutic IgG antibody responses capable of desensitizing allergic mice to allergen-induced Type I hypersensitivity reactions. Finally, we have demonstrated a proof-of-concept for the therapeutic potential of nanofiber-based peanut allergen vaccines directed against peanut allergen-derived epitopes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Active immunotherapy for C5a-mediated inflammation using adjuvant-free self-assembled peptide nanofibers

  Acta Biomaterialia · 2024-03-05 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R21AR066244

  NIH · $379k · 2017

• NIH Grant R21CA196434

  NIH · $632k · 2019

• Supramolecular pediatric HIV vaccine design

  NIH · $3.1M · 2019–2025

• NIH Grant R21AI094444

  NIH · $429k · 2013

• NIH Grant R01AI118182

  NIH · $3.1M · 2019

Frequent coauthors

• Sean H. Kelly

  Johns Hopkins University

  21 shared

• Yaoying Wu

  SUNY Upstate Medical University

  20 shared

• Jangwook P. Jung

  19 shared

• Jai S. Rudra

  18 shared

• Anita S. Chong

  University of Chicago

  14 shared

• Huifang Han

  Xian Yang Central Hospital

  13 shared

• Ye Tian

  Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry

  13 shared

• Charles Sfeir

  University of Pittsburgh

  12 shared

Labs

• Collier GroupPI

  The design of biomaterials for a range of biomedical applications, with a focus on understanding and controlling adaptive immune responses.

Education

• PhD, Biomedical Engineering

  Northwestern University

  2003

Awards & honors

• Clemson Award for Basic Research. Society for Biomaterials.…
• Lois and John L. Imhoff Distinguished Teaching Award. Pratt…
• Fellow. American Institute of Medical and Biological Enginee…
• 2015 Biomaterials Science Lectureship. Royal Society of Chem…
• Distinguished Investigator, Junior. Biological Science Divis…