Group Members

Cristina Elisa Martina

Current research Professor

PhD in Science, University of Liège, Belgium
cristina.e.martina [ at ] vanderbilt.edu
Vanderbilt University - MBRIII 5140 Office Suite

Research Interests:

• Protein design
• Antibody design
• Vaccine development
• Glycan Masking
• Venoms

Collaboration with Crowe Lab: https://www.vumc.org/crowe-lab/

Project Description:

My research is focused in the field of immunogens design. Antibodies are powerful biomolecules that can potentially bind any natural or artificial epitope in a strong way. Vaccines are also widely recognized as essential biomolecules to prepare the immune system against pathogens and to prevent infections.
In my work, I adopted a structure-based approach to design antibodies and develop vaccines. In particular I am using Rosetta, a software for protein modeling and design, to analyze the stability and binding energies of antigens and immunogens. Thanks to the collaboration with Crowe lab, my efforts in the design of therapeutic biomolecules are focused on viral pathogens such as the Ebola virus and Marburg virus.

Publication link:

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u0ZvSuIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao