Seminar - Engineering immunity: In vivo delivery of synthetic gene-encoded vaccines and immunotherapies against emerging viral and antimicrobial resistant bacterial pathogens

Sponsored by UBC Department of Microbiology & Immunology

Abstract: Gene-encoded biologics are a rapidly growing field and advancements in nucleic acid-based technologies (DNA, mRNA) and viral vectors (Ad, VSV, AAV) are paving the way for prophylactic and post-exposure approaches to combat infectious diseases.  My laboratory focuses on cross-disciplinary strategies to design, engineer, and study gene-encoded vaccines and immunotherapies that target emerging viral pathogens and antimicrobial resistant bacteria.  We employ synthetic DNA vectors as a versatile platform to study biologic designs directly in vivo and to dissect cellular and immune mechanisms that contribute to protective efficacy.  My group is interested in the direct impact of design on mechanisms known to affect vaccine immunogenicity including antigen presentation, development of lasting B cell and T cell memory, and in applying this data to improve protection against difficult-to-protect pathogens.  DNA-encoded antibodies are part of a much newer approach for in vivo delivery of protein immunotherapies.  We are interested in multiepitope targeting with DNA-encoded antibodies as a strategy to evade pathogen escape, as well as approaches to modulate effector functions to facilitate immune cell recruitment.  Furthermore, DNA-encoded antibodies can be utilized as important tools to study immune protection versus pathogenesis directly in vivo.  In this seminar, I will discuss how my research brings together multi-disciplinary approaches to design gene-encoded biologics targeting respiratory viral and drug-resistant bacterial infections of serious consequence.