Novel Biotherapeutics Seminar
Student, September 2020 – December 2020
Teaching Assistant, September 2021 – December 2021
About This Seminar:
In “Biological and Engineering Principles Underlying Novel Biotherapeutics”, I reviewed and discussed 50+ scientific papers. These topics included the development and therapeutic use of monoclonal antibodies, protein engineering, drug delivery, nucleic acid-based biotherapeutics, embryonic stem cells, and cancer immunotherapy.
Teaching Assistant:
I taught two 2-hour lectures and discussions on oligonucleotide therapy and splicing enhancers for both pre- clinical experiments and clinical trials. Additionally, I helped lead paper discussions and provided written and verbal feedback on my peers’ original proposals.
Research Proposal Final Project:
I designed and wrote 12-page, independent, original research grant proposal: “T cell Epitope Modification of AAV for Immune Escape”. After learning about the limitations of AAV as a delivery mechanism due to its high immunogenicity, I decided to find a way to help evade the adaptive immune system to allow for multiple doses of an AAV-based therapeutic. Specifically, I focused on T cell receptor recognition as many current labs are engineering ways to reduce recognition by B cells and antibodies. My approach involves predicting in silico binding affinities between peptides and MHC molecules, then using directed evolution to find the best mutations to both reduce MHC binding affinity and maintain structure and functionally of the AAV capsid proteins.
Skills Developed:
- Critical analysis of published literature
- Experimental design
- Scientific writing of original research grant proposal
- Oral presentations
- Figure design
- Leading paper discussions
- Presenting current research
- Peer review of proposals and mentoring