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SUMMARY:Molecular Decryption of Immune Responses
DTSTART:20180416T121500
DTSTAMP:20260510T025821Z
UID:a1816b5d278cd49f9ad592c6160f4beee227e8189bfcce32c16c6f88
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Sai Reddy\, ETH\, Basel (CH)\nBIOENGINEERING SEMINAR\n(s
 andwiches will be served)\n\nAbstract:\nThe ability to predict and corresp
 ondingly manipulate antibody responses is highly valuable for biotechnolog
 y and medicine. To achieve this requires a greater molecular understanding
  of antigen selection and specificity in antibody repertoires. In this pre
 sentation I will describe how we are decrypting antibody repertoires by id
 entifying antigen-associated molecular patterns. Detection of these patter
 ns is based on the principle of convergent selection: different individual
 s exposed to the same antigen respond with antibodies that converge to sim
 ilar sequence space. Molecular convergence is specifically identified by b
 ioinformatic recoding of high-throughput sequencing data of antibody reper
 toires into constituent biochemical sequence space. By combining this appr
 oach with a statistical learning framework we are able to accurately predi
 ct antigen exposure and potential antigen specificity based on antibody se
 quences alone.\n \nI will also highlight recent work in our group aimed t
 owards engineering antibodies at high-throughput in mammalian cells throug
 h genome editing. We have recently established a technique known as homolo
 gy-directed mutagenesis (HDM)\, which is able to generate mutagenesis libr
 aries directly in mammalian cells using CRISPR-Cas9. HDM enables several o
 f the most essential methods of antibody engineering\, which are usually o
 nly possible in microbial or in vitro systems (e.g.\, phage\, yeast)\, to 
 be performed in directly in mammalian cells. This includes generation and 
 screening of synthetic libraries for antibody discovery and affinity matur
 ation. Finally\, by combining HDM with high-throughput sequencing\, we are
  able to perform deep mutational scanning on antibodies in order to decryp
 t their antigen-recognition sequence landscape.\n\nBio:\nSai Reddy is a te
 nure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosystems Science & E
 ngineering\, ETH Zurich\, Switzerland. His research group uses methods in 
 systems and synthetic biology to study and manipulate immune responses for
  applications in biotechnology\, vaccination\, and immunotherapy. Sai Red
 dy holds B.S. (2003) and M.S. (2004) in Biomedical Engineering from Northw
 estern University (Evanston\, IL\, USA). He completed his Ph.D. thesis at 
 Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL\, Switzerland) in Bioengi
 neering and Biotechnology (2008).  Sai Reddy did post-doctoral research a
 t the University of Texas\, Austin (2008-2011).\n\n 
LOCATION:SV 1717 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==SV%201717
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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