Successful vaccines and immune therapies contain more than just bits of harmful bugs; they also contain components that guide our immune response, making them more effective. Duke engineer Joel Collier and his group are hacking proteins’ natural ability to bend, fold, and assemble to create precisely blended vaccines. His team attaches important proteins (modeled here as red, cyan, and green) to short nanofiber segments (grey). When mixed, the proteins self-organize, creating a scaffold that delivers the perfect concoction of chemicals. In the future, these scaffolds might be used in many other applications, from tissue engineering to nanofabrication.
This image was chosen as a winner of the 2016 NIH funded research image call.
Credit: Peter Allen
NIH funding from: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB)
Posted by National Institutes of Health (NIH) on 2016-06-03 17:50:37
Tagged: , NIH , NIBIB , vaccine research , proteins , scientific research , vaccine , nanofiber , Duke U , sticky proteins , NIH Image Gallery