Structure-guided engineering of chimeric adeno-associated virus libraries with enhanced capsid assembly
Project Description
Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are widely utilized in gene therapy, yet their clinical efficacy is often compromised by limited packaging efficiency and pre-existing immunity. To this end, a popular notion is to diversify the entire AAV capsid by, e.g., shuffling domains between different natural AAV serotypes. However, past attempts showed that existing algorithms fail to take into account the complexity of AAV packaging, leading to low proportions of functional variants. To tackle these issues, we first aim to enhance the existing SCHEMA-RASPP structure-guided protein library design algorithm by transforming it into a machine learning (ML) model that incorporates graph neural networks (GNNs). Specifically, this model will be trained on large-scale experimental and synthetic structure-function datasets derived from public databases and in-house chimeric AAV capsid libraries. We further aim to develop a novel, highly scalable in silico pipeline to map B-cell epitopes onto the predicted 60-mer AAV capsid structure by utilizing state-of-the-art biomolecular structure prediction models. We believe this project would lead to the generalization of the advancements in protein design research to AAVs, where progress has been relatively stale.
Supervisor
ZHU, Bonnie Danqing
Quota
1
Course type
UROP1100
Applicant's Roles
1) Review the literature on (1) AAV biology, (2) GNNs for science, and (3) structure-guided protein engineering.
2) Collaborate closely with a senior member of the lab to curate AAV capsid stability data.
3) Redesign an existing structure-guided chimeric protein library design algorithm to generalize to AAVs.
Applicant's Learning Objectives
1) Understand AAV biology and its significance in gene therapy for treating incurable genetic disorders.
2) Apply and improve existing algorithms in protein engineering to design viral protein libraries.
3) Collaborate with lab members with diverse expertise to answer scientific questions grounded in applications in medicine.
Complexity of the project
Challenging