In Dr. Willett’s lab, we are teaching biopharmaceutical development concepts and techniques via high-school student intern projects. Interns in the teaching lab learn molecular biology, fermentation, cell culture, nucleic acid and protein purification and characterization techniques to study recombinant proteins designed to address a variety of biopharmaceutical topics.
This year’s group of CBSD students are working on a wide variety of projects such as protease engineering for research purposes, indications such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and immuno-oncology targets, antibody design and engineering, antibody-drug conjugates, antivirals, antitoxins targeting botulinum neurotoxin and ricin, drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier, and microbial pathway engineering to enable in situ production of therapeutic metabolites.