KOREA_HS

Designing a Hyperstable Antibody with
Cell-penetrating Peptide for Intracellular Targeting

Attributions

Our Team

Ji Soo Hwang, Jina Bae, Yoonyee Song, Jonathan Lee, Melissa Kim, Atena Mori, Dokwon Lee, Harry Lee, Do Hoon Kim, Yeonjo Jung, Beomseok Kim, Daniel Lee, Paul Shin, Youngseo Yun

Wet Lab

: Dokwon Lee, Ji Soo Hwang, Do Hoon Kim, Atena Mori, Paul Shin, Beomseok Kim, Yoonyee Song, Melissa Kim, Jina Bae, Daniel Lee, Harry Lee, Yeonjo Jung

Collaboration

: Jina Bae, Yoonyee Song, Do Hoon Kim, Atena Mori, Daniel Lee, Dokwon Lee, Ji Soo Hwang

Human Practices - Public Engagement

: Melissa Kim, Yeonjo Jung, Ji Soo Hwang, Jonathan Lee, Paul Shin, Yoonyee Song, Jina Bae

Human Practices - Integrated

: Jonathan Lee, Melissa Kim, Ji Soo Hwang, Yeonjo Jung, Paul Shin, Youngseo Yun, Beomseok Kim

Model

: Jina Bae, Dokwon Lee

Wiki Organization

: Yoonyee Song, Jina Bae, Ji Soo Hwang, Do Hoon Kim, Melissa Kim, Dokwon Lee, Jonathan Lee, Beomseok Kim, Yeonjo Jung, Atena Mori, Harry Lee, Youngseo Yun, Daniel Lee, Paul Shin

Wiki Design

: Yoonyee Song, Jina Bae, Harry Lee

General Support

Professor Jungwoo Choe, our primary PI, has helped our team extend our research from our IGEM 2019 project. He provided us commentary upon our idea of engineering the cell-penetrating peptide tagged scFv(P5) antibody created last year to graft Ras, an intracellular membrane protein. Derived from last year’s homology modeling idea that proved the validity of this CPP tagged scFv(Ras), Professor Choe helped identify the possibility of designing such an experiment to synthesize the antibody. Furthermore, Professor Choe gave Jina advice on conducting protein-protein docking modeling to explore and validate the effectiveness of such antibodies on a molecular scale. Without his support and advice, our team would have been unable to smoothly progress this project.

Project Support and Advice

Sunho Hong, our instructor, helped us through every lab experiment and taught us the basics of lab safety, equipment usage, and lab conduct. During each lab section, he never hesitated to answer questions related to higher-level biology and spared his own time outside of the lab in efforts to support us to the fullest extent. He also assisted us in analyzing and understanding the results of our experiment. In terms of modeling, he advised us to use the protein-protein docking modeling, allowing us to move our experiment a step further, accomplished by cross-checking how the antibody interacts with both human and mouse Ras. This became a crucial factor in considering how the synthesized antibody could be moved into the in vitro testing phase in commonly used lab mice.

Lab Support

The University of Seoul Natural Science Research Institute provided us with lab facilities and equipment needed to conduct the experiment.

Difficult Technique Support

Joseph Kim, a freshman at Washington University in St. Louis, supported Jina to create and analyze the Protein-protein docking model. He gave advice on using ClusPro to showcase the interaction between the two proteins. With higher-level of knowledge on biology, Joseph was able to provide a new perspective on analyzing the interactions shown from the model’s results. Without his help it would have been difficult to execute an unfamiliar modeling program and showcase the model in the best way possible.

General Advice Support

Dyanne Ahn, our project advisor, helped the teams stay organized and on track to meet all required deadlines. As the team leader of Korea_HS 2019, she gave advice on how to stay productive and answered related questions throughout the duration of the competition. Furthermore, she supported Jina in verifying the final protein-protein docking model.

Saniya was our iGEM mentor, and she was amazing. She not only answered our questions about the iGEM competition itself, but also gave us advice for presentations, labs, and video making.

Human Practices Support

Mr. Ho-juhn Song is a founding member of GENOSCO. He is a key developer of Lazertinib, a chemical drug undergoing clinical trials, and has experienced technology export of a scale of 15 trillion won from Johnson & Johnson. He is currently the CEO at Pinetree Therapeutics, Inc. Through the interview with Mr. Song, our team was able to receive guidance for our experiment. We discussed the potential of our project in relation to the medical and commercial world, as he has had numerous experiences with commercializing medicinal drugs.

Dr. Kyungja Cho is a major physician at Asan Medical Center, a leading hospital in South Korea, whose major is pathology, more specifically cancer.. She is an expert in this field and has conducted many experiments regarding antibodies and its impact on cancer cells.

Mr. Taegwon Oh is the director of CELLID and R&D. While CELLID does not focus specifically on the development of antibodies, our team received valuable advice in commercializing our product and discussed the potential economic achievements that our project may have in the medical world.

Mr. Kim Min Soo is a researcher at Orum Therapeutics and has had practice experimenting with antibodies and the development of antibodies that are beneficial. Through our interview with Ryan, we were able to identify the errors that may occur in our experiment due to the fact that we were using a foreign antibody (scFv-8).

External Support