Dr. Simone Conti

Harvard UniversityCambridge, MA, United States

Abstract:

It is well known that producing a vaccine for highly mutable viruses, like influenza or HIV, is a daunting, and yet unsolved, problem. The high mutability rates of these viruses allows them to elude the classical strategies employed by the immune system, making the produced antibodies inefficient. Yet, in few infected patients it has been observed the formation of antibodies with a broad spectrum of activity, which are able to recognize different viral strains. Unfortunately, these Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies (bNAbs) take a long time to form naturally, if ever. The goal of this talk is to give some insight into the modeling of the formation of these bNAbs, with the ultimate goal of developing vaccination strategies able to elicit their formation. In particular, the talk will focus on the in silico evaluation of the antibody-antigen binding affinity, which is a key step for a quantitative modeling of the maturation of the antibodies.