When it comes to engineering proteins, Dr. Roland Strong and his lab in the Division of Basic Sciences, are probably the people you want to talk to. As Dr. Strong described it, “We’ll often take bits of human proteins and we’ll simply ‘Mr. Potatohead’ them together in some novel way.” He explained how, to do this, his lab utilizes a system that they had developed about 10 years ago called Daedalus, which allows quick, cheap and remarkably effective protein production. More recently, the lab used this system to produce NKG2D ‘decoys’, which they hoped could be used to interfere with a signaling axis that that is used by tumorigenic cells to their advantage.
