AFTERNOON SHORT COURSE: SUNDAY, APRIL 24
Instructor:
Vinodh B. Kurella, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Protein Engineering, Immuno-Oncology Division, Intrexon Corp.
Computational immunogenicity predictions for antibodies as well as pathogens help in the rational design and re-engineering. This facilitates the minimization of anti-drug antibodies (ADA) and optimal vaccine design. We will learn about the latest in
silico tools that can shorten the process from design to preclinical validations.
Learning Objectives:
- T cell epitope predictions from primary sequences
- Peptide binding predictions to MHC class I and MHC class II
- B cell epitope predictions – linear versus conformational epitopes (3D structure)
- Antigen structure prediction via protein homology model
All materials including tutorials/exercises and scripts will be available for users during and after the workshop. No prior programming experience necessary. Please bring your laptop for the workshop
Instructor Biography
Vinodh B. Kurella, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Protein Engineering, Immuno-Oncology Division, Intrexon Corp.
Vinodh Kurella is a protein/antibody engineer with focus on structure guided antibody humanization. Uses computational modeling based approach to design, engineer antigens and humanize and affinity mature antibodies. He has joined Intrexon Corporation,
Germantown- MD as a protein engineering expert. In this role, he is responsible for antibody design and humanization for CAR-T platform. In addition, manages protein expression, purification and binding studies (SPR). Previously, he was a research
fellow at Harvard Medical School/ Dana Farber Cancer Institute. He received PhD from Dept. of Biochemistry at LSU Health Sciences Center in the field of protein X-ray crystallography.