Body Defense Bootcamp: Therapy to Retrain Immune System Named UMD’s 2026 Invention of the Year

What if the body’s immune system could be rewired not to attack itself—the same way a smoke alarm can be recalibrated to stop going off when there’s no fire? 

A team of University of Maryland researchers has developed a therapy to do exactly that, and on Tuesday it claimed the Life Sciences and Overall Winner categories in the university’s annual Invention of the Year competition. Called Antigen-Specific Immune Tolerance (ASIT), the technology creates microparticle “depots” injected directly into the lymph nodes—the body’s immune command centers—to correct how cells decide what to attack and what to leave alone. A single dose produces strong, long-lasting effects, and early results suggest it may even be able to repair tissue that has already been damaged by disease. 

"This concept represents a major shift in how we think about treating autoimmune disease and is the result of the hard work of a fantastic group of researchers," said principal investigator and Robert E. Fischell Institute Professor for Translational Medicine Christopher Jewell. "Instead of suppressing the immune system non-specifically, we’re teaching it to just correct dysfunctional response and leave healthy immune function intact."

Autoimmune diseases affect millions of people worldwide, yet most current treatments rely on broad immune suppression that leaves patients more vulnerable to infections and complications while doing little to address the underlying cause. ASIT takes a different approach, creating tolerance-inducing hubs that work locally to rebalance the immune system without further damage. The therapy has shown promise for a wide range of conditions, including type 1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis, celiac disease, vitiligo and transplant rejection. 

Along with three other category winners, the award was announced Tuesday at Innovate Maryland, an annual celebration of UMD researchers’ creativity in translating cutting-edge research into practical, impactful solutions. 

"Our researchers are redefining what's possible across science, medicine and technology," said Vice President and Chief Research Officer Patrick O'Shea. "From pulling 'forever chemicals' out of our drinking water to harnessing the power of quantum light, this year's finalists remind us that bold ideas and rigorous science can change lives and the world."

In addition to the Invention of the Year awards, two faculty innovators received special recognition awards for their significant contributions to UMD's innovation ecosystem:

• Anne Simon, professor of cell biology and molecular genetics, received the Innovation Catalyst Award for spurring innovation on campus and in industry. Simon co-founded Silvec Biologics with her brother Rafael Simon to deploy her research against citrus greening disease—a bacterial infection that has devastated Florida's citrus industry since 2005 and continues to threaten production worldwide.
• Srinivasa Raghavan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and fellow at the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices, received the Entrepreneur of the Year Award for his exceptional record of translating research into real-world impact through startup creation and technology commercialization. Raghavan has co-founded three startup companies—Medcura, Grip Boost and Gelectric—with appointments spanning the Brain and Behavior Institute, the Fischell Department of Bioengineering, the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical Devices and the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute.

Here are the awardees in the remaining categories of the 2026  Invention of the Year: 

Information Sciences: Teaching Human Fine Motor Skills to Robots via the RAND Laser System
Training a robot to do what human hands do naturally—peel a shrimp, suture a wound, harvest a strawberry—has long required enormous amounts of data, expensive equipment and still-unreliable results. The RAND Laser System, developed by researchers in the A. James Clark School of Engineering and the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, cuts through the complexity with a single demonstration. A camera and laser grid capture human motion, extract key waypoints and map them to the robot’s workspace—no massive dataset required. In testing, the system achieved 75% success in tasks as delicate as extracting crab meat, a result comparable to a non-expert human. The implications stretch from surgical robotics to food processing to agricultural harvesting.

Physical Sciences: Rare-Earth Metal Ion Recovery Using a Self-Assembling Ligand System
The rare-earth metals used to build our phones, electric vehicles and renewable energy systems are extraordinarily difficult to recover and recycle. Traditional extraction methods are slow and chemically intensive and often yield impure results. Researchers in the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences have designed a molecule that solves this problem by self-assembling around rare-earth ions to selectively bind and separate them from complex mixtures. The process is rapid, recyclable and precise, with the potential to build a more sustainable and reliable supply chain to support clean energy infrastructure. 

Quantum Technology: Topological Photonics Architecture for Optical Computing and Artificial Intelligence (TOPAI)
Today’s AI systems are bumping up against hard limits. They consume enormous amounts of power, generate tremendous heat and struggle to scale. TOPAI, developed by researchers in the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences and the A. James Clark School of Engineering, offers a different approach: computing with light instead of electricity. Like a train locked onto a track, TOPAI’s topological photonic states keep information stable and on course even as the system scales, opening a new frontier for AI infrastructure that is faster, cooler and more resilient than ever before.