Presenter(s): Karly Fear — Biology
Faculty Mentor(s): Parisa Hosseinzadeh
Session: (In-Person) Oral Panel—Daily Dose of Proteins
Each year, over 630,000 people in the US suffer from non-union bone fractures, or fractures that do not heal completely without further medical intervention. To improve bone healing in non-union fractures, researchers have shown that bone morphogenetic protein 2 (BMP-2) improves bone regeneration. However, it is critical to fine tune the physiological dose and spatiotemporal control of BMP-2 release from a delivery biomaterial to avoid adverse side effects such as abnormal bone growth. I leverage the structural and biophysical insight of molecular modeling and design to generate protein binders predicted to control the release of BMP-2 into a fracture site via affinity interactions. I characterize subsequent protein binder designs using yeast surface display and flow cytometry. Over 1,000 designs are tested using this high-throughput computational and experimental pipeline and I will further characterize the toxicity, stability, and structure of a subset of these designs for practical application.