Posted by anderc8 on Monday, July 17, 2017 in News, TIPs 2016.

Written by Heather Darling, Laboratory Manager – Meiler Lab

The second annual Symposium on Modeling Immunity was held April 27, 2017. The symposium focused on modeling and designing antibodies, and was hosted by Dr. Jens Meiler and Dr. James Crowe, Jr. within the Vanderbilt Center for Structural Biology and Vanderbilt Vaccine Center.

Over 100 people attended the symposium, including members of the Vanderbilt community and representatives from institutions from around the world. The event began with a welcome and introduction from Dr. Meiler. This was followed by keynote speaker Sarel Fleishman, Ph.D., of the Weizmann Institute of Science presenting “Atomic design of new antibodies guided by structure and sequence information from natural antibodies.”

Other speakers included:

• Frank DiMaio, Ph.D., University of Washington – Protein structure determination to atomic accuracy from cryoEM density using Rosetta
• Steven Kleinstein, Ph.D., Yale School of Medicine – Analysis of B cell antibody repertoires from next-generation sequencing
• Andrew Ward, Ph.D., The Scripps Institute – CryoEM as a tool to evaluate immune responses to vaccine candidates
• Jens Meiler, Ph.D., Vanderbilt University – Structure prediction and computational design of antibody/antigen interactions

The event concluded with a poster session and reception in the fifth-floor atrium of MRBIII. Trainees from the Vanderbilt Program for Next Generation Vaccines presented updates on their current studies. The speakers and attendees were impressed with the professionalism of the event and look forward to future symposiums.

This project is supported by a Vanderbilt University Trans-Institutional Programs (TIPs) award – Vanderbilt Program for Next Generation Vaccines and NIAID/NIH and the Modeling Immunity in Biodefense Network (U19AI117905).

Readers are encouraged to ask questions and/or leave comments in the space provided below. Direct questions can be sent to Dr. Jens Meiler (jens.meiler@vanderbilt.edu) or Heather Darling (h.darling@vanderbilt.edu).