Glycoprotein engineering: Exploiting pathogen immune evasion strategies in vaccine design and therapeutics Event

Event details

Abstract: Pathogens have evolved a myriad of different strategies to modulate the host immune response. These can both limit the ability of the immune system to raise an effective sterilising immune response but understanding these barriers can also suggest therapeutic routes to overcome them. For example, HIV has evolved a dense coat of glycans to protect the underlying protein surface from immune recognition. Paradoxically, however, antibodies from some patients infected with HIV can recognise this glycan shield. Understanding the structure of the glycan shield can therefore guide the design of immunogens. Similarly, understanding how pathogens can selectively modulate the immune system can provide opportunities for immunotherapy. Immunotherapy is a growing field but the complexities of immune reactions along with redundancy in receptors and cytokines has made rational intervention in immune networks challenging. Naturally occurring immune evasion factors exhibit remarkable potency and selectivity in immune modulation and present evolutionary solutions to immune modulation that might otherwise present insurmountable problems to protein engineering and design. My primary research interests are to investigate how virus glycosylation can be targeted therapeutically and how understanding pathogen immune evasion factors can guide the development of immunotherapies.