Dane Wittrup, PhD, a pioneer in protein engineering technologies who has helped accelerate development of antibody therapies for cancer, will deliver the next Flexner Discovery Lecture on Thursday, March 22.
His lecture, entitled “Synergistic Innate and Adaptive Cancer Immunotherapy,” will begin at 4 p.m. in room 208 Light Hall. It is sponsored by the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center.
Wittrup is the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former associate director of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.
Wittrup and his colleagues have developed powerful new methods in protein engineering, including yeast surface display, for directed evolution of binding affinity and specificity. He is particularly interested in ways to provoke a therapeutic immune response against tumors.
He earned his PhD in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and did postdoctoral work in the Yeast Molecular Biology Group at Amgen before joining the faculty in Chemical Engineering, Biophysics and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He came to MIT in 1999.
In 2007 Wittrup co-founded Adimab LLC, a leading antibody discovery company. He serves on the scientific advisory boards of several other companies.
He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Biomedical Engineers.
For a complete schedule of the Flexner Discovery Lecture series and archived video of previous lectures, go to www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/discoveryseries.
