New Tools for Engineering Biopharmaceuticals for Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease

Professor Patrick Daugherty
Department of Chemical Engineering
University of California
Santa Barbara

Date: Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Place: Engineering II, Room 3361

ABSTRACT

Current biopharmaceuticals, including peptides and antibodies, rely upon specific interactions with their intended targets in complex environments.  In human serum, for example, therapeutic and diagnostic reagents must discriminate between tens of thousands of different molecular species present in widely varying concentrations.  Yet, precise selectivity is seldom achieved, or even characterized. In fact, current therapeutics are molecularly promiscuous leading to reduced efficacy and increased side-effects.

Protein engineering methodologies offer the potential to engineer therapeutics that possess increased target specificity and binding affinity, and consequently, improved efficacy.  Towards this goal, we have developed a set of new protein engineering tools to enhance biomolecular targeting, environmental sensing, and highly-specific inhibition activities.  These tools provide significant opportunities to generate biomolecular reagents with enhanced properties for next generation diagnostics and therapeutics.