Prince R. Prabhu

Biography

Human Lymphatic filariasis is a complex parasitic disease, a multi-pronged approach that incorporates both vaccine and drug development would be an ideal step towards therapeutic intervention and eradication. (1) In terms of drug development approach, my research work involved in the structural characterization filarial proteins using crystallographic methods. During my DAAD fellowship visit, I had opportunity to learn X-ray crystallographic methods and this enabled me to solve for the first time the experimental structure of Glutathione S-transferase (Wb-GST). This revealed the role of Wb-GST as a potential drug target. (2) The crux of my vaccine research in filariasis involved the use of filarial antigens expressed from various recombinant systems and evaluation of the same incorporating novel vaccine strategies. I reported for the first time that pichia expressed recombinant lymphatic filarial antigens (GP29/VAH) combined with multiple-antigen mode is a promising vaccine strategy by virtue of ~80% reduction in worm burden. This idea can be explored in future for developing multi-valent fusion vaccines from higher expression systems. Further, in my dissertation, I also validated that the earlier reported protective epitopes of filarial thioredoxin (conjugate peptides) constitute the part of a dominant conformational epitope and also confirmed its role in protective response by biochemical, structural and protection studies. The X-ray structure of Wb-TRX was also solved in collaboration with University of Hamburg

Research Interest

Immunotechnology (vaccine/diagnostics development), Immunopharmacology, Structure biology, genetic engineering, recombinant protein production