Engineering and Directed Evolution of Proteins
Protein Engineering and Design
The motivation of our work is to enable novel biomedical applications and therapies through the use of engineered proteins. However, the problems to be solved to reach this goal are typically very basic and fundamental in nature. They often require to investigate the biophysical and structural aspects of proteins, and thus this research also helps us to better understand proteins. Very often, also the development of new technologies is required, such as for directed evolution.
Because of the complex nature of these challenges, our lab is very interdisciplinary. It ranges from protein design and modeling, to directed evolution, to structural biology and biophysical investigations, to cell culture work and animal work. Several projects have gone through all these stages. All aspects are connected by our core ability to engineer proteins — in many ways — and these combined efforts made many projects possible in the first place.
One key capability we have developed over the years is to create novel binding proteins, e.g., the DARPin technology we have invented, and to use them in numerous applications. Another is the ability to create stable protein variants through design and evolution, which has helped in creating crystallizable G protein-coupled receptors, stable antibodies, and stable intracellular binding proteins. An area of particular interest has been the use of engineered proteins in targeted tumor therapies.
Our projects:
- Protein Engineering Applied to Tumor Targeting
- Gene Therapy: Shielded, Retargeted Adenovirus
- G-protein coupled receptors
- Designed Armadillo Repeat Proteins for creating modular, sequence-specific binding to linear epitopes
- Designed Ankyrin Repeat Proteins as Scaffolds for Selective Binding
- Antibody engineering
- Ribosome Display
- Yeast Display
- Phage Display and Related Methods
- Directed Evolution and Engineering for Stability of GPCRs
- Structural biology
- Protein Design and Molecular Modeling
- Protein Engineering Applied to Tumor Targeting
- Gene Therapy: Shielded, Retargeted Adenovirus
- G-protein Coupled Receptors
- Designed Armadillo Repeat Proteins for creating modular, sequence-specific binding to linear epitopes
- Designed Ankyrin Repeat Proteins as Scaffolds for Selective Binding
- Antibody Engineering
- Ribosome Display
- Yeast Display
- Phage Display and Related Methods
- Directed Evolution and Engineering for Stability of GPCRs
- Structural Biology
- Protein Design and Molecular Modeling