ABSTRACT
There is growing interest in development of antibodies to provide instant immunity that protects susceptible individuals against infectious diseases, especially pathogens for which no vaccine is yet available. However, many of these pathogens, especially those that manifest as highly transmissible or latent infections, express complex arrays of virulence factors and are adept at avoiding the immune system. Some organisms have developed strategies to selectively destroy anti-pathogen antibodies, while others create decoys that trick the host immune system into generating antibodies that are at best non-protective and, at worst, enhance pathogenesis. Design of pathogen-resistant antibodies can present novel therapies and in turn guide development of protective vaccines for these challenging pathogens. This talk will provide an overview of our progress engineering antibodies resistant to specific immune defense mechanisms used by the herpesvirus, human cytomegalovirus. 

RESEARCH
The Maynard lab develops protein therapeutics and vaccines to address unmet medical needs in infectious diseases. These proteins aim to directly interfere in disease progression or augment essential immune system activities. To do this, they design a candidate protein, with an emphasis on engineering the kinetics with which it interacts with other proteins as well as targeting protein transport to specific tissues in the body. This is followed by protein expression and purification to make the protein; biophysical, biochemical and cellular analyses to elucidate the molecular basis of activity; and, ultimately, in vitro and in vivo experiments to evaluate the protein’s ability to prevent disease.

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