Prof. George Georgiou, PhD
Cockrell Family Regent’s Chair in Engineering #9
Department of Biomedical Engineering
Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology
The University of Texas at Austin

Every year our department remembers our beloved former colleague, Janice Lumpkin, by sponsoring the Lumpkin Memorial Lecture, which as been presented by some of the most prominent names in biochemical engineering.

DATE/TIME/LOCATION:
UMBC's Look Ahead Conference
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
3:30 – 6:30 pm

TITLE:
Engineering the Next Generation of Protein Therapeutics

ABSTRACT:
A major long-term interest of our group is the engineering of proteins for pharmaceutical and biotechnology applications. To this end, we have developed a set of high throughput screening techniques relying on bacterial expression and flow cytometry that enable the isolation of novel proteins with desired functions from ensembles (“libraries”) of hundreds of millions of protein variants. These studies have led to the engineering of antibodies exhibiting ultra-high antigen affinity, serum and/or novel effector functions, and of therapeutic enzymes that exhibit exquisite catalytic activity and optimal pharmacological properties. Examples that will be discussed as part of this talk include:
(a) The isolation, expression and therapeutic optimization (Fc engineering) of IgG in E.coli
(b) “Humanized” non-immunogenic enzymes for amino acid depletion in cancer.
(c) Proteases that exhibit exceptional activity and selectivity towards the cleavage of desired peptide targets.