@cusycon

postdoc virologist @UQ : believes in imagination-💡 -traveller : loves nature 🏔🗻🏝🏖🛩📷

Joined March 2007
Excited to share our recent work describing the broadly cross-reactive and protective flavivirus NS1 antibody in @DWatterson_ @ProfPaulYoung and Prof. George Gao and Yi Shi. 1/n science.sciencemag.org/conte…
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Naphak Modhiran retweeted
1/ De novo binder design used to succeed in the 0.1 to 10% range, so finding one real binder meant synthesising 100s of proteins. BindCraft reports experimental success between 10 & 100% depending on the target, avg 46.3%. Ten designs was often enough to reach a nanomolar hit↓
Exciting to see our protein binder design pipeline BindCraft published in its final form in @Nature ! This has been an amazing collaborative effort with Lennart, @csche11h, @sokrypton, @befcorreia and many other amazing lab members and collaborators. nature.com/articles/s41586-0…
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Today, we’re announcing mBER-2, our latest AI protein design system, and sharing a bit of how we use it to explore biology in vivo at scale. For a long time, we’ve been working on what I think of as “frontier problems” in medicine and biology. We know a lot about the targets involved in disease, but there is still an enormous amount of biology we haven’t explored, and potential uses for that biology we haven’t discovered. One of those problems is drug delivery. There are thousands of potential targets, and most receptors remain unexplored as routes for delivering medicines. We want to understand which ones we can use, where they can take a drug, and what kinds of molecules make that possible. Ultimately, we need to test these molecules in vivo to understand what they actually do. We’ve spent the last six years building measurement technologies that let us generate millions of measurements in living systems. mBER-2 is an AI protein design system built for that scale of in vivo measurement. Our goal is to generate binders across the full range of targets we care about, while systematically exploring the possible binding sites on each one. It’s not just what you bind, but where and how you bind that determines whether a molecule performs it's function. mBER-2 lets us probe those differences at massive scale. We’re also sharing a look at some of our in vivo data. We’ve designed more than 50 million molecules across over 4,000 targets, and screened millions of molecules in living systems. By probing hundreds of receptors, we’ve found new pathways for delivering genetic medicines into fat that outperform industry benchmarks by a large margin. This is just the beginning. We call the space of all bindable sites across proteomes the EpiTome. As we explore it, we’re building the data to connect AI design, receptor binding, and what a molecule actually does in a living organism. Much like the idea of a virtual cell, we envision a Virtual Organism that helps us design medicines with specific properties in mind. The foundation is our own in vivo data, connecting molecular design to outcomes measured in living systems. The endgame is to use AI to explore more biology, measure what happens, and use what we learn to design better medicines. Every round should deepen our understanding of biology and improve our ability to build molecules that do what we need them to do.
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🧪@Columbia engineered E. coli act as “drug factories” inside tumors - a fascinating #syntheticbiology approach. By converting 5-FC to 5-FU locally & delivering #immunotherapy payloads, the platform combines targeted #chemotherapy with immune activation. linkedin.com/posts/drmelvins…
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Niet in de media, maar West Nijl virus statistiek incl dieren. Dit is One health. Het virus circuleert tussen muggen en vogels en vanwaaruit worden soms mensen en paarden geïnfecteerd. rivm.nl/westnijlkoorts/actue… elk nieuw geval (paar, mens) laat dus zien waar het virus zit
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Naphak Modhiran retweeted
Excited to share that our norovirus NS3 study is online in Nature Communications! 🎉 These enzymes, found across an order of RNA viruses, have been molecular motors in search of a function. We think we’ve uncovered their role. (🧵) nature.com/articles/s41467-0… #virology #cryoEM
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A small molecule turns an onco-protein into a polymer and thereby triggers its destruction. This striking route to targeted protein degradation is exemplified by BI-3802. It binds transcription factor B cell lymphoma 6 (BCL6) and induces its reversible assembly into filaments. The resulting supramolecular structure promotes ubiquitination by the SIAH1 E3 ligase and proteasomal degradation of BCL6. Cryo-EM revealed how the drug becomes part of the protein–protein interface that drives polymerization. 1/
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Check out this new blog to discover how CEPI has partnered with @AnthropicAI to help accelerate critical steps in the response to the devastating Bundibugyo ebolavirus outbreak affecting the DRC ⬇️
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, global health organizations including @CEPIvaccines, @WHOAFRO, and @inrb_kinshasa are using Claude to accelerate their response to an outbreak of an unusual Ebola variant. Read the full piece here: anthropic.com/features/ebola…
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SCMB’s @JodyPeters20, @HenryDmal & @JessHarrison03 developed the ISVac™ platform using non‑infectious virus particles. It's now moving toward human trials with Proboxis Biotechnology, a start up with support from Uniquest & $1.5M via Biointelect Venturer. tinyurl.com/9bumpb7u
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Timely revisit! Abs power MMR efficacy against measles Measles-specific mAbs isolated from MMR vaccinee potently & broadly neutralize, target conserved sites & protect animals post exposure, opening means to prevent/treat measles as outbreaks re-emerge cell.com/cell-host-microbe/f…
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#IgG-expressing plasma cells (PCs) are more proliferative and migrate more efficiently to the bone marrow (BM) than #IgM PCs, promoting IgG PC enrichment in the BM in mice. Learn more in Science #Immunology: scim.ag/4A2O59V
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Today in @Nature we report how AI-guided redesign enhances protein evolution. Integrating ProteinMPNN sequence design with autonomous laboratory evolution, we establish a workflow to engineer enzymes with improved properties over those evolved from natural proteins. Redesigned starting points consistently evolve an expanded fitness landscape, reaching new function with higher activity, specificity, and stability than their natural counterparts. drive.google.com/file/d/1C-Q… 1/14
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We are excited to share two preprints reporting a mosquito-specific receptor for chikungunya virus and related alphaviruses! 🤩biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… biorxiv.org/content/10.64898… @HarvardMicro @VirologyHarvard @hhmi_science
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