Personal Information and Interests

Education:
B.Eng. Chemical Engineering
University of Minnesota, 2001

Academic Interests

Research Interests: Engineering of Chinese Hamster Ovary Cell for Improved Protein Quality
Thesis Advisor: Daniel I. C. Wang

Research Description

In the last decade, there are increasing numbers of therapeutic proteins produced by mammalian cells, approved by FDA and manufactured by biotechnology companies. This phenomenon is contributed to the fact that mammalian cells are capable of performing complex post-translational modification. Of particular interest, glycosylation attaches and modifies series of oligosaccharide structures to the polypeptide chain. The presence and structure of carbohydrates provide product with longer half life, higher solubility and greater biological activity.

Three Dimensional Structure of IFN, a glycoprotein
Source: http://www.pdb.org

Although most glycoproteins from mammalian cells with some degree of glycosylation heterogeneity are accepted by FDA, future work must be done to improve the consistency of glycosylation for each production phase. The aim of my study is to identify which degradative enzyme is responsible for causing heterogeneity in glycoprotein and to engineer a cell line with improved glycoprotein consistency using various molecular biology tools.