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doctoral thesis

Protein Engineering for Personalized therapy and diagnosis

Wei, Lixia  
2022

Protein Engineering, especially protein post-translational modification (PTM), ex-tends proteomes in a more complex way than one can expect from analysis of their encod-ing genomes. It can activate or deactivate certain catalytic functions, add new desired func-tions, or change some biological activity of the protein. In this thesis work, we use protein engineering tools to show that a number of functions can be engineered to improve protein-based therapeutics. First, on melanoma cancer vaccine development, we demonstrated a new and ver-satile nanovaccine platform to address the major challenges in neoantigen cancer vaccine delivery by "polymerizing" the neoepitopes through a reversible polycondensation reaction. Using synthetic long peptide (SLP) bearing a neoepitope and multiple amine groups as one monomer (monomer A) mixed with another reactive bi-functional monomer (monomer B), we prepared a polycondensate neoepitope (PNE) with controlled sizes and responsiveness, which showed superior LN targeting and efficient activation of antigen-presenting cells (APCs). Upon internalization by APCs, redox-responsiveness antigen release facilitated the endosome escape and cytosol delivery of peptide antigens and markedly promoted the cross-presentation, and elicited potent antigen-specific CD8+ T cell responses in immunized mice, therefore, enabling markedly enhanced antitumor efficacy in a prophylactic mouse model. Second, on antivirals development, we demonstrated a protein-based new and ver-satile approach for broad-spectrum virucidal material through a one-step reaction by simply chemically conjugating a long flexible and hydrophobic ligand onto the surface of a protein core. Modified proteins reproducibly showed not only effective antiviral inhibition but also a good virucidal effect. Broad-spectrum antiviral inhibition effect was observed against HSV-2, Influenza H1N1, and SARS-CoV-2. Two important key factors, ligand density, and ligand hydrophobic force, significantly influenced antiviral inhibition and virucidal effect. This protein-based antiviral platform provided an easy-manufactured, versatile, broad-spectrum effective, and potentially translatable antiviral solution. At last, we demonstrated a lipoprotein-cholesterol nanoparticle-based non-invasive cancer diagnosis system. In this preliminary test and proof of concept, lipoprotein-cholesterol nanoparticles were extracted from 5 melanoma cancer patients' serum by a lab-developed simple and reproducible technique with a high yield. This method successfully eliminated the most abundant inert protein serum albumin and accumulated low abundance proteins, which are usually masked by serum albumins. LC-MS/MS proteomic analysis data indicates within a false discovery rate less than 0.05, differentially expressed proteins, either up-or down-regulated proteins with fold-change over 2, were identified and can potentially be used as cancer biomarkers.

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Type
doctoral thesis
DOI
10.5075/epfl-thesis-8705
Author(s)
Wei, Lixia  
Advisors
Stellacci, Francesco  
•
Tang, Li  
Jury

Prof. Philippe Spätig (président) ; Prof. Francesco Stellacci, Prof. Li Tang (directeurs) ; Prof. Raffaele Mezzenga, Prof. Jean-Christophe Leroux, Prof. Jeffrey Hubbell (rapporteurs)

Date Issued

2022

Publisher

EPFL

Publisher place

Lausanne

Public defense year

2022-03-25

Thesis number

8705

Total of pages

169

Subjects

protein engineering

•

polycondensate neoepitope (PNE)

•

cancer vaccine

•

protein functionalization

•

broad-spectrum antiviral

•

virucidal

•

lipoprotein-cholesterol nanoparticle

•

non-invasive

•

cancer biomarker

EPFL units
SUNMIL  
Faculty
STI  
School
IMX  
Doctoral School
EDMX  
Available on Infoscience
March 17, 2022
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/186465
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