Daniel Luo

Cancer Immunotherapies have emerged as a promising approach to treating cancer by using immune cells to selectively target cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact. Specifically engineered antibodies have shown high potential in clinical trials due to their ability to recognize specific cancer related proteins. However, they have a very limited scope because they are unable to recognize intracellular proteins, which comprise the majority of tumor-associated proteins. One solution is to use TCR mimics (TCRm), specific engineered antibodies that are able to recognize the MHC molecule, a molecule which presents intracellular proteins. 

One problem with TCRm is that they often bind to healthy cells because they have not been naturally programmed to recognize MHC. However, by engineering these TCRm in the same way that proteins that naturally recognize MHC do, we can increase their specificity. By identifying critical binding residues, we can introduce millions of random mutations at these binding points and identify the TCRm variant that is the most specific to its respective target. This will allow us to create antibodies that benefit from traditional antibody treatments while also not having to be limited in the type of cancer cell the antibody can target.