STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND CANCERS
R E S E A R C H
WHAT CAN WE DO FOR THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC?
The world has changed a lot since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and so have we.As the call for a broadly neutralizing vaccine becomes increasingly urgent, our lab applied successful strategies to generate a mono-GlcNAc-decorated protein vaccine with enhanced protection. We further explored the structural and immunological mechanisms underlying the benefits of the glycoengineered viral surface protein, Spike.
Everyone can catch the seasonal flu. Yet this common infectious disease is killing half a million people each year around the world.Failure to efficiently kill the virus after infection and develop successful "flu" vaccines is caused by constant variations of its surface proteins. We designed non-conventional strategies for this: a) truncating glycan chains of surface proteins to expose more conserved regions during vaccine development, and b) using flu-specific glycan-binding agents that arrest the virus before its amplification.
Cancers are generally not infectious diseases. But do you know that you can defend against cancer using the same immune system that defends against pathogens?What if one day our body can produce antibodies that kill cancer cells before theyever have a chance to develop? What are the cancer-specific targets we are looking for? How can we improve the efficacy of antibodies? Will cancer vaccinesbe realized? These are major questions to be answered. We believe structural biology will play an indispensable role in finding those answers.
You may survive chemotherapy after having cancer, but you won't have such a chance whenbacteria become resistant to all antibiotics.The seemingly simple process of bacterial growth is much more complicated than expected. Antibiotic development is therefore extremely critical and involves several stages: inhibitor screening, protein-inhibitor structures, and structure-based drug design and improvement.