Antibodies are immune proteins that our bodies produce to help fight off infection. Where they recognize and bind a pathogen — and how — can give important clues to the microbe’s vulnerabilities. Fred Hutch Cancer Center structural biologists Marie Pancera, PhD, and Nicholas Hurlburt, PhD, understand how subtleties of antibody-target interaction can guide development of better treatments and vaccines.
“When you look at the structures of antibodies and their targets, you learn how they interact and where the antibody binds,” Pancera said. “The visualization of ‘sites of vulnerability’ gives you information you can use to inform vaccine design.”
These insights can reveal where investigators should focus vaccine efforts and how to modify microbial structures to improve protective responses to vaccines. Pancera hopes to provide these insights for antibodies that scientists can use to help prevent or treat diseases, like malaria and HIV, that remain health burdens around the world.
Most recently, she and Hurlburt, a staff scientist on Pancera’s team, contributed structural insights that helped an international team of investigators show that two newly isolated broadly inhibitory antibodies can target a key part of the protein that malarial parasites use to stick infected red blood cells to blood vessel walls.
