Duke Human Vaccine Institute
Project Title: Assessing HIV-1 Broadly Neutralizing Antibody Association Pathways for Vaccine Immunogen Design
Award Year: 2021
Biography
Rory Henderson’s laboratory uses an integrated structural biology approach to design vaccine antigens. They use molecular dynamics simulation as a computational microscope to monitor how antibodies attach to viral surface proteins to neutralize a target virus. This information allows them to control how this happens during vaccination and update vaccine designs to induce more specific responses. Their efforts focus primarily on the induction of broadly neutralizing antibodies targeting the HIV-1 envelope fusion protein.