Events
O xoves 12 de setembro de 2024 o Dr. Luis Ángel Fernández (Investigador Científico do CSIC) ofrecerá o seminario "Synthetic biology of E. coli for cancer therapies and generation of nanobodies", dentro do ciclo "CINBIO Seminar Programme".
Será ás 11:00h na Sala de Seminarios da Torre CACTI.
Abstract:
Current cancer therapies are inefficient for solid tumors and radically new approaches are needed to improve clinical outcome. Bacteria have been investigated as therapeutic agents in cancer treatments due to their natural capacity to colonize and proliferate in solid tumors, which in combination with their intrinsic immunogenicity, are advantageous for cancer therapies. In our group, we use synthetic biology for engineering non-pathogenic Escherichia coli K-12 chassis with functional genetic modules for the development of bacteria-based cancer therapies. In this presentation I will describe our recently developed Synthetic Injector E. coli (SIEC-X) strains carrying: i) a protein injection module based on the Type III Secretion System (T3SS); ii) a protein cargo module for injection of the catalytic domains of ADP-ribosyl transferase (ART) toxins; iii) a three-repressor regulatory module (3R-X) to control T3SS and cargo expression; iv) an adhesion module based on synthetic adhesins (SAs) enabling to program the adhesion of bacteria toward an antigen expressed by the surface of tumor cells. In addition, I will introduce our work for selection and directed evolution of nanobodies, single domain antibodies derived from camelids that can be efficiently displayed on the surface of E. coli. In particular, I will present the application of in vivo mutagenesis methods to affinity mature nanobodies from a naïve library in E. coli and its implications for developing a continuous selection of high-affinity nanobodies from universal libraries.
Bio:
Dr. Luis Ángel Fernández is a Senior Researcher of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB) in Madrid, Spain. He received his PhD in Science (Molecular Biology) from the Autonomous University of Madrid (1995) and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California San Francisco and, later, in the Department of Microbial Biotechnology at the CNB-CSIC. Since 2005 he leads a research group focused on protein secretion and the engineering of bacteria for biomedical applications, such as the selection of nanobodies or the generation of recombinant bacteria for therapeutic use using synthetic biology. Co-author of more than 80 peer-review original articles, in addition to several book chapters, he is also an inventor in several international patents. He has participated in national and international scientific committees, and is a member of editorial committees in several scientific journals. He received the "Jaime Ferran Research Award" from the Spanish Society of Microbiology in 2007.
