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RESEARCH GOALS

We strive to develop protein therapeutics to address unmet medical needs. This work falls into three categories: infectious diseases, with a focus on Bordetella pertussis and cytomegalovirus as target pathogens and emerging efforts in anti-cancer antibodies. The latter effort is pursued in conjunction with the CPRIT Advanced Protein Therapeutics core facility. Together with other faculty at UT Austin interested in protein therapeutics, we helped launch Texas Biologics in 2021. 
 
Many of our projects involve generation of antibody-based proteins that interfere in disease progression or augment essential immune system activities. We design proteins to intervene in specific steps of the disease, produce the proteins for biochemical characterization to elucidate the molecular basis of activity and, ultimately, in vitro and in vivo experiments to evaluate therapeutic potential. In addition, we develop tools to support our engineering efforts, such as our recently described mammalian display system that supports engineering of proteins requiring mammalian membrane, post-translational modifications or other features specific to  mammalian cells to produce active protein. 

 

  • Outsmarting pathogens with antibodies: Discovery and design of antibodies that resist pathogen efforts to evade capture or that redirect cellular immune responses towards infected cells.
    • Qerqez AN, Hoffmann K*, Lee AG*, Pareek S, Hager K, Mishra AK, Delidakis G, Gottler RL, Chowdhury A, Kolb P, Georgiou G, Hengel H, McLellan JS, Stanton R, Nguyen AW and Maynard JA. Uncoupling binding to host and viral Fc receptors restores antibody-mediated NK cell activation against HCMV-infected cells. Biorxiv, (2025). [link]
    • Goldsmith JA, Nguyen AW, Wilen RE, Wijagkanalan W, McLellan JS*, Maynard JA*, Structural basis for antibody neutralization of pertussis toxin. PNAS, 122(14):e2419457122 (2025). [link]
    • Nguyen AW, DiVenere AM, Papin JA, Connelly S, Kaleko M and Maynard JA, Neutralization of pertussis toxin by a single antibody prevents clinical pertussis in neonatal baboons. Science Advances 6, eaay9258 (2020).​ [link]
 
  • Outsmarting pathogens with vaccines: Discovery of antibodies that disrupt activities contributing to infection, identification of their epitopes and characterization of their mechanisms of  protection. This information can be used to design vaccine antigens (by collaborators or others) that focus immune responses on these vulnerable epitopes to induce potently protective antibody responses. 
    • Silva R, DiVenere AM, Amengor A, Maynard JA. Antibodies binding diverse pertactin epitopes protect mice from B. pertussis. JBC, 298(3): 101715 (2022).
    • Goldsmith J, DiVenere AM, Maynard JA, McLellan JS. Structural basis for antibody binding to adenylate cyclase toxin reveals RTX-linkers as key neutralization-sensitive epitopes. Plos Pathogens 17(9): e1009920 (2021). [link]
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  • Outsmarting cancer: Discovery and design of antibodies endowed with novel capabilities, such as those with conditional activity at the site of disease. 
    • Liu, Y, Nguyen AW* and Maynard JA*. Engineering antibodies for conditional activity in the solid tumor microenvironment.  Curr Opin Biotechnol, invited review, (2022).
    • Liu Y, Lee AG, Nguyen AW*and Maynard JA*. An antibody Fc engineered for conditional ADCC at the low tumor microenvironment pH. JBC, 298(4):101798 (2022).
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