Group Members

Amy (Minh) Tran

Current Graduate Student

BS in Medical Sciences, University of Cincinnati, USA
minh.h.tran [ at ] vanderbilt.edu
Vanderbilt University - MBRIII 5140 Office Suite

Research Interests:

• Antigen-antibody interactions
• Hydrogen Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry (HDX-MS)
• Structure prediction and modeling with HDX data

Co-mentored by  Dr. Kevin Schey (Schey Lab)

Project Description:

My overall research goal is to study antibody-antigen interactions with hydrogen deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS). This includes performing HDX-MS experiments on the antigen and antibody by itself and in complex. Additionally, to complement the peptide level resolution of HDX-MS due to scrambling, I will apply computational methods to construct high resolution models, ideally to identify residue-residue contacts between antibodies and antigens using the Rosetta protein modeling software suite. My research goals can be subdivided into two aims: I will first benchmark a new method I am developing, RosettaHDX, and make it available to the research community. My second aim is the application of RosettaHDX to study antibodies that bind to the trimer interface of hemagglutinin, a surface protein of the influenza virus, starting with the antibody FluA-151 --- a sibling of the antibody FluA-20. Antibodies like FluA-20 are a new and exciting class of antibodies that target the intermediate prefusion conformation of hemagglutinin and promise a novel approach to influenza vaccine design.