Members of Center for Glycoengineering of Advanced Biologics
- Thomas Fuerst, CGAB Director; Professor, Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics (UMD). Dr. Fuerst’s research is focused on the development of next generation vaccines and protein-based therapeutics for infectious disease and cancer. The Fuerst group brings together an assemblage of scientific disciplines including virology, immunology, analytical chemistry, cell biology, structural biology, computational biology, and protein engineering. The multidisciplinary programs include: 1) a structure-based vaccine design program focused on enveloped viruses, 2) a scaffold-based protein therapeutics program focused on cancer targets, and 3) an immunoadjuvant and delivery program focused on polyphosphazene-based macromolecular delivery systems.
- Nathan Lewis CGAB Co-Director; GRA Eminent Scholar and Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Georgia. Dr. Lewis’ research develops and deploys diverse genomic, systems and synthetic biology technologies to engineer mammalian cell systems for enhanced biotherapeutic production. These efforts include the sequencing and annotation of the CHO and hamster genomes, development genome-scale computational models of protein secretion, glycosylation, and metabolism and the development and use of algorithms and genome editing tools to engineer CHO cell lines with enhanced control of cell growth, protein production and product quality for therapeutic applications. His research involves the development and use of advanced algorithms and single cell technologies to study the immunological responses to and cell-cell communication resulting from such biotherapeutics.
- Alexander Andrianov Research Professor, IBBR. Dr. Andrianov is a leader in the field of polyphosphazenes with a long-standing interest in advanced synthetic macromolecules and their life sciences applications. His research is focused on the design and synthesis of hybrid organic-inorganic macromolecules and understanding how they interact with biological targets. These studies culminated in a pioneering work in the field of polyphosphazene immunoadjuvants and vaccine delivery systems and establishment of fundamental principles of their self-assembly with proteins and cells. The attained crucial findings now inform efforts on the development of biodegradable PEG-alternative ‘stealth’ technologies and non-covalent assembled drug delivery systems. Recent success in the direct visualization of individual polymer chains, which have long been considered ‘invisible’ in vitrified solutions by cryoEM due to their low mass contrast, offers an unprecedented level of control over synthetic and nano-assembly processes utilized in this research. Dr. Andrianov has been involved in all aspects of technology development and commercialization, including product advancement from the research laboratory to manufacturing and clinical trials.
- Parastoo Azadi Associate Director of Analytical Service and Training, at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (UGA).Dr Azadi has over two decades of experience running a national glycoanalytics service center that has collaborated with 1000s of researchers, and industry users. Her facility has expert-level experience with diverse glycoanalytics technologies, including NMR, LC/UPLC–MS, and many other techniques.
- Saif Hasan Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (UMB). Dr. Hasan’s research employs cryo-electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography to elucidate the structural mechanisms of multi-protein complexes involved in cellular trafficking. His work focuses on understanding how these molecular machines control protein secretion and how genetic mutations and viral hijacking contribute to their dysfunction. Within CGAB, his laboratory contributes to the "Engineering of Protein Secretion" section by providing structural insights into the pathways that monitor and manipulate protein flux, enabling the precise control of glycan diversity and density in recombinant biologics.
- Yuxing Li Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology (UMB). Dr. Li’s lab studies how B cells, a critical part of the immune system, respond to viral infections, and applies these findings toward antibody discovery and the development of vaccines and therapeutics to treat viral infections. Dr. Li’s work has focused on defining broadly neutralizing antibody responses elicited by HIV-1 envelope glycoproteins during natural infections and in animal models. These findings contributed to the in-depth understanding of HIV broadly neutralizing antibody response targeting the most conserved and accessible functional elements of the HIV envelope glycoproteins including the receptor binding site and have important implications for vaccine and immunotherapeutics development. Other targets in Dr. Li’s laboratory include glycoproteins of filoviruses and flaviviruses, as well as bacterial toxins.
- Roy Mariuzza Professor, Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics (UMD). Dr. Mariuzza’s research is focused on understanding how immune system cell surface receptors recognize molecules. Several classes of recognition molecules are under study: antibodies, T cell receptors (TCRs), natural killer (NK) cell receptors, and variable lymphocyte receptors (VLRs). Current projects include: T cell recognition of self-antigens in multiple sclerosis, T cell recognition of tumor antigens in human melanoma, structural basis for recognition of cellular and viral ligands by NK receptors, evolution of the adaptive immune system, structural analysis of the TCR–CD3 complex and TCR signaling, structure-based design of hepatitis C vaccine.
- Daniel Nelson Professor, Department of Veterinary Medicine (UMD). Dr. Nelson is an internationally recognized pioneer in bacteriophage-derived endolysins as alternatives to conventional antibiotics. His laboratory at IBBR conducts structure-function studies of endolysins targeting clinically important human and animal pathogens and applies bioengineering approaches to develop next-generation endolysins with enhanced activity, broader host range, and improved thermostability. He is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors for his contributions to antimicrobial discovery and holds foundational patents in endolysin engineering jointly developed at the University of Maryland and NIST. Within CGAB, his laboratory contributes expertise in protein engineering and enzymology, with a particular application to the characterization of glycoengineered therapeutic enzymes, including SERPINs.
- Gilad Ofek Associate Professor, Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics (UMD). Dr. Ofek’s research focuses on elucidating the structural organization of viruses and the molecular mechanisms that underlie their recognition and neutralization by the immune system. His group employs structural and biophsysical approaches to dissect the pathways leading to effective antibody responses arising during natural infection and vaccination. Insights gained from these studies advance the understanding of antibody recognition of viral pathogens and inform the rational design of vaccines, a central objective of Dr. Ofek’s research program.
- John Orban Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (UMD). Dr. Orban’s research interests focus on the area of protein structural biology and design, particularly in understanding how the malleability of protein folds relates to biological function. High field solution NMR spectroscopy and other biophysical and biochemical methods are employed in his laboratory to study protein switches, intrinsically disordered proteins, and multi-protein signaling complexes.
- Brian Pierce Associate Professor, Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics (UMD). Dr. Pierce’s research interests focus on computational structural biology, and his laboratory has developed a number of predictive protein modeling and design algorithms to carry out their research, including TCRFlexDock, RosettaTCR, ZRANK, and ZDOCK. The laboratory is a member of the RosettaCommons community, which is a global network of developers of the Rosetta modeling and design software.
- Eric Toth Associate Research Professor, IBBR Dr. Toth applies biochemical and biophysical techniques, including X-ray crystallography and cryo-EM, to accelerate the development of agents that modulate the function of a wide array of potential therapeutic targets. These efforts include the development of next generation protein therapeutics, novel vaccines, and small molecule inhibitors of biologically important proteins.
- Lai-Xi Wang Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (UMD). Dr. Wang has been working on glycoprotein synthesis and glycoengineering or therapeutic antibodies. His group also develops novel inhibitors to manipulate glycosylation in mammalian cell expression of therapeutic proteins and engineered E. coli systems for glycoproteins production.
- Bruce Yu Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences (UMB). Dr. Yu’s research group is focused on biophysical measurements, imaging agents, and biomaterials. His current focus is on noninvasive analytic technologies for pharmaceutical manufacturing and quality control. He received the 2004 Kimmel Scholar Award and the 2005 US Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers.