Development of antifungal biopharmaceutical dectin1-FC fusion

• Main Author: Goh, Melody
• Other Authors: Chen Wei Ning, William
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2018
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Bioengineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/75181
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Invasive fungal infections are a neglected category of disease that has a high mortality and implicated in immunocompromised patients. Dectin-1 (CLEC7A) is a type II transmembrane C-type lectin pattern recognition receptor expressed on innate immune cells such as macrophages, monocytes and neutrophils. These cells identify β-glucans via its single C-type lectin-like domain on its extracellular region. It activates by detecting and binding to cell walls of different types of fungal; triggering intracellular responses like phagocytosis and cytokine production. The absence of β-glucans in human cells presents the opportunity to exploit Dectin-1 as therapeutic vehicle to enhance immune response during a fungal infection. This project aims to develop a soluble Dectin-1 immunoglobulin Fc fragment fusion protein as a potential biopharmaceutical against fungal infections and investigate its ability to enhance phagocytic activity in immune cells. His-trap purification column will also be optimized in this project to obtain optimum purification conditions for this protein.