Julie ChampionAssociate Profesor - Georgia Institute of Technology

Title:Understanding and Controlling Protein Self-Assembly for Development of Therapeutic Materials

Abstract:Proteins can provide therapeutic functions simply not possible with small molecule drugs, but their large size and folded structure present critical challenges in terms of delivery, stability and activity. We take advantage of protein size, structure and the ability to interact with other proteins, in order to create therapeutic protein materials via self-assembly routes not available for small molecules. The ability to control assembly of therapeutic proteins is essential to manipulating the final physical properties of the material, ensuring retention of protein activity, and directing the interactions between materials and cells. In this presentation, I will describe the development, characterization and performance of two different functional protein assemblies, intracellular antibody Hex nanocarriers and globular protein vesicles. The Hex carriers seek to open up the intracellular space for antibodies as an approach to aim at "undruggable" intracellular protein targets. The vesicles, themselves made from functional proteins, aim to present protein and small molecule cargo for a variety of applications. In each case we applied a rational protein design strategy to enable self-assembly and have performed extensive characterization to understand the structures formed, their dynamics and stability, and how to tune the material properties for specific applications. These properties significantly affect how the protein assemblies interact with biological systems and the current status of application of these materials towards therapeutic targets will be shared.

Bio:Julie Champion is an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and a member of the Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences and the Bioengineering Program. She earned her B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan. Dr. Champion completed her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara as a National Science Foundation graduate fellow under the advisement of Dr. Samir Mitragotri. She was a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology in the lab of Dr. David Tirrell. Professor Champion's current research focuses on design and self-assembly of functional materials made from engineered proteins for applications in immunology, cancer, and more recently, biocatalysis. Dr. Champion has received a BRIGE award from the National Science Foundation, the Georgia Tech Women in Engineering Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Georgia Tech BioEngineering Program Outstanding Advisor Award.