Antibody epitope team (EPITOPE)
The EPITOPE team, led by Professor Lea Klingenberg Barfod with the support of Associate Professor Rahma Elmahdi and Professor Michael Theisen, focuses on malaria, monoclonal antibodies, epitope-based vaccinology, and detection of linear B-cell epitopes for serological viral screening.
We elucidate the characteristics of highly protective monoclonal antibody epitopes into multivalent vaccine candidates as well as identify immune evasion mechanisms of malaria parasites. We are currently developing vaccines targeting both Plasmodium falciparum sporozoites, merozoites as well as the sexual stages in the mosquitoes.
Further we undertake epidemiological surveys of viral exposures in immune-mediated inflammatory disease (IMID) to understand how viral infections may contribute to immune disease development.
The EPITOPE team has expertise in the following areas:
- Monoclonal antibody production and characterisation
- Functional pathogen assays
- Vaccine design
- Pre-clinical vaccine development
- Clinical vaccine trials
- Protein engineering
- B-cell bioinformatics
- Phage-immunoprecipitation sequencing
The team has close collaborations with researchers at the University of Oxford, Imperial College London, The Sanger Institute in Cambridge, University of Ghana, Technical University of Denmark, as well as the other teams at CMP.
For more information about this team, please contact the EPITOPE team leader
