Biotherapeutic Glycoengineering and Immunology

The aim of our research is to gain basic insights in the role of carbohydrates in immunological and disease processes and to generate novel biotherapeutic approaches.

Glycosylation plays a key role in many biological and disease mechanisms. Glycosylation is highly complex, species-, tissue- and differentiation specific. Using glycosylation approaches and optimizing glycosylation of molecules and cells has a high potential for a large series of applications including novel platform technologies and biopharmaceuticals.

In our research group, we apply and develop advanced glycoengineering technologies to elucidate the role of glycosylations in complex immunological networks and use these for identifying novel drug targets and generating novel drug candidates and therapeutic strategies.

Our focus lies within glycoimmunology, microbiome glycoengineering, glycomic and glycomimetic display systems as well as molecular and cellular glycoengineering, antibody and glycoprotein-engineering, phage display technologies, and mammalian bioprocess engineering.

Glycoimmunology, molecular and cellular glycoengineering for biopharmaceuticals
Cellular and molecular glycoengineering of immune cells and antibodies for elucidation of the glycoimmunological network and the role of carbohydrates, glycoengineered disease specific antibodies, agonistic and antagonistic immune checkpoint antibodies and for generation of new therapeutic strategies and targets including biomarkers. Strategic goals are the identification of novel drug targets, and the generation of novel drug candidates and therapeutic strategies.

Glycoengineered microbiome-based anti-infectives and novel glycomic display systems
This research aims at developing high-density display and screening technology based systems for studying the microbiome and to generate novel non-antibiotic anti-infective drugs and new oral drug delivery systems.

Translational Immunology, biomarkers for high throughput and cost efficient diagnostics
We study inflammation in settings of obesity, injury, sepsis, and respiratory infections using methods for quantification of coding and non-coding RNA by microfluidic high-throughput real-time quantitative PCR. Design, optimization, and implementation of diagnostic tests for human and veterinary pathogens are carried out in collaboration with e.g. DTU Aqua and Centre for Diagnostics, DTU.

Besides these molecular and cellular engineering technologies further focus lies on new generations of human single domain phage-display libraries for next generation antibody fragments, bi-and multispecific  antibody and immunofusion molecules as well as on biopharmaceutical suitable bioprocess development, including perfusion-based bioreactor processes.

Key technologies

• Molecular and cellular glycoengineering
• Antibody engineering: bi- and multispecific antibodies and immunofusions
• Phage display of single domain antibodies and scFv
• Mammalian cell based bioproduction incl. perfusion technologies
• Cellular Immunology and immune cell engineering
• Microfluidic high-throughput real-time quantitative PCR for quantification of coding and non-coding RNA in tissue samples, cell cultures, and blood.
• Proteomics
• Microbiota characterization and engineering
• Molecular Biology, Biochemistry, Cell biology, Microbiology, Innate and Adaptive Immunology

Our research is highly collaborative, both internally and internationally, with an applied aim and we desired to extend our network and welcome new members from academic research and industry around the globe.