Interdisciplinary protein engineering approach to design high affinity antibodies for flaviviruses

Project Narrative Engineered antibodies present a new treatment modality for viruses to circumvent major obstacles presented by the existence of various serotypes in certain viruses, and to address the development of engineered antibodies that can cross-react related viruses. These two applications are the focus of this interdisciplinary proposal, where a computational residue-based pharmacophore description of the monoclonal antibody interface is used to direct phage display experiments in order to identify broadly neutralizing or cross-reacting antibodies against dengue and Zika viruses.