Project Details
Description
Abstract
Recombinant monoclonal antibodies considered a new modality of therapeutic treatment to fight viral
infections. A particular challenge for viral mAb development is the isolation and characterization of mAbs with
broadly neutralizing activity (bNAbs) against multiple members of a single viral family to provide an
immunotherapeutic advantage, particularly for infectious agents whose cases can progress rapidly toward
serious disease.
Our goal for the identification of bNAbs is protein engineering by a synergistic combination of
computational and experimental methods, to enhance the breadth and potency of a specific mAb using
designed mutations. Phage display provides an efficient way to randomly explore up to 1010 unique library
members simultaneously. However, a typical antibody-antigen interface of ~15 residues present a
combinatorial possibility of 2015 mutational variants, only a fraction of which can be sampled. As a result, phage
display and other antibody combinatorial methods are reliant on restriction of either amino acid diversity or
interfacial positions, which limits the effectiveness of the approach. To circumvent this limitation, we propose to
develop an interdisciplinary approach where computationally designed, residue-based pharmacophore
descriptions of the antibody-antigen interface are used to direct the library design in subsequent phage display
experiments. As a test bed for this method, we will engineer novel bNAbs against flaviviruses, which include
the globally important pathogens dengue virus and Zika virus.
Status | Finished |
---|---|
Effective start/end date | 11/15/18 → 10/31/23 |
Funding
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: $417,500.00
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: $345,444.00
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: $417,500.00
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: $72,056.00
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: $417,500.00
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: $417,500.00
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