My laboratory aims to create vaccines that are needed for important infectious diseases and to devise new strategies to enable vaccine creation. Our vaccine targets include HIV-1, pandemic influenza, Ebola and SARS-CoV-2. Our vaccine research is primarily focused on antibody-mediated immune responses, so our work involves investigation of antigen-antibody interactions and the interrogation of B cell populations.

We are also interested in establishing approaches to enable small-molecule drug discovery toward targets that have proven refractory (i.e., “undruggable” targets). One of the targets that we study is the HIV-1 gp41 hydrophobic pocket involved in viral membrane fusion during HIV infection. Another is the immune checkpoint protein PD-1. Anti-PD-1 antibodies have shown dramatic effects in some cancer patients. These drugs work by enhancing the endogenous anti-tumor activity of T cells. We want to enable discovery of small molecules that target immune-checkpoint proteins. Such drugs could offer safety advantages due to their far shorter half-lives as compared to antibodies, and possibly potentially greater efficacy owing to their greater penetration and distribution within the tumor microenvironment.