Byong Kang (WITTRUP LAB)

Development of Anti-human KLRB1 Antibodies for Cancer Immunotherapy

Checkpoint blockade therapies work by blocking inhibitory immune interactions, thereby “releasing the brakes” on the immune system. An inhibitory receptor called KLRB1 has been found to be overexpressed in activated immune cells by scRNA-seq. The potential to enhance immune function by blocking KLRB1 was demonstrated in a gene knockout model. To block its receptor-ligand interaction, we have engineered human antibodies specific to KLRB1 by yeast display and directed evolution.

Erika DeBenedictis (TIDOR & ESVELT LABS)

Evolving Quadruplet Decoding tRNAs Using Massively Parallel Directed Evolution

Quadruplet codon translation is an attractive strategy for genetic code expansion, but is limited by the inefficiency of quadruplet decoding. We developed a robotics-assisted directed evolution approach, and applied it to evolve large sets of tRNAs for efficient quadruplet decoding. Many variants arose with substantially improved quadruplet decoding, revealing the surprising extent to which three- versus four-base translation is controlled at the tRNA level.