Hanhao Zhang

BioE Ph.D. Defense Presentation

10 am-12 PM on Mondayday, December 1st, 2025

Location: 1128 IBB, Suddath Seminar Room 

https://gatech.zoom.us/j/7974652626?omn=99042215234

Advisor: 

Aniruddh Sarkar, Ph.D. (Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University)

Committee:

Hang Lu, Ph.D. (School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University)

Wilbur A. Lam, Ph.D. (Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University)

Omer T. Inan, Ph.D. (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology)

Xuezheng Song, Ph.D. (School of Medicine, Emory University)

    Diagnosis of various endemic infectious diseases remains a challenge due to lack of sensitive and specific biomarkers which can be detected inexpensively. Antibodies have good potential in serving as ideal biomarkers for inexpensive sample-sparing diagnostic tests, thanks to their amplified abundance produced by the immune system. While antibody titer alone is inadequate for accurate diagnosis, the properties of Fc region on antibodies have been recently shown to correlate with disease presence and state in various infectious diseases. Yet current biomarker discovery assays targeting Fc properties, especially N-glycosylation, are sample and labor extensive when large numbers of analytes and samples are involved in addition to the large size and cost of testing equipment. 

    To address the above limitations in existing solutions for measuring Fc properties, especially N-glycosylation, on antigen-specific antibodies, this thesis presents several microscale platforms for biomarker discovery and detection: first, µMAP, a biomarker discovery platform was developed to quantitatively measure both antibody Fc properties (N-glycosylation, Fc receptor affinity, isotypes and subtypes) and titer with minimal sample usage. Then, µMAP was deployed to discover biomarkers in onchocerciasis, a helminth-based neglected tropical diseases. Next, MALDI-Spot, a technique where MALDI was integrated with patterned polymer sheets, was developed to provide MS-level glycan resolution in quantifying N-glycan on antigen-specific antibodies with limited sample usage. To detect antibody biomarkers discovered by the above platforms, EASyELISA, an electronic platform that quantitatively measures antibody properties at high throughput, was developed and verified by detecting antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 antigens. Finally, we address the cost and availability of the equipment required for using the above platforms by proposing two custom prototypes for microarray fabrication and imaging. Overall, by leveraging microscale tools, the thesis enabled high-throughput multiplexed antibody fc profiling-based biomarker discovery and detection.