Current biomedical titanium alloys have been repurposed from other industries, which has contributed to several biologically driven implant failure mechanisms. This review highlights the added value that may be gained by building an appreciation of implant biological responses at the onset of alloy design. Specifically, the fundamental mechanisms associated with immune response, angiogenesis, osseointegration and the potential threat of infection are discussed, including how elemental selection can modulate these pivotal systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPseudosymmetric hetero-oligomers with three or more unique subunits with overall structural (but not sequence) symmetry play key roles in biology, and systematic approaches for generating such proteins de novo would provide new routes to controlling cell signaling and designing complex protein materials. However, the de novo design of protein hetero-oligomers with three or more distinct chains with nearly identical structures is a challenging unsolved problem because it requires the accurate design of multiple protein-protein interfaces simultaneously. Here, we describe a divide-and-conquer approach that breaks the multiple-interface design challenge into a set of more tractable symmetric single-interface redesign tasks, followed by structural recombination of the validated homo-oligomers into pseudosymmetric hetero-oligomers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLong-standing goals of cancer immunotherapy are to activate cytotoxic antitumor T cells across a broad range of affinities while dampening suppressive regulatory T (Treg) cell responses, but current approaches achieve these goals with limited success. Here, we report a IL-21 mimic, 21h10, designed to have augmented stability and high signaling potency in both humans and mice. In multiple animal models and in human melanoma patient derived organotypic tumor spheroids (PDOTS), 21h10 showed robust antitumor activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Alzheimer's Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP) is a national initiative to understand the genetic architecture of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) by sequencing whole genomes of affected participants and age-matched cognitive controls from diverse populations. The Genome Center for Alzheimer's Disease (GCAD) processed whole-genome sequencing data from 36,361 ADSP participants, including 35,014 genetically unique participants of which 45% are from non-European ancestry, across 17 cohorts in 14 countries in this fourth release (R4). This sequencing effort identified 387 million bi-allelic variants, 42 million short insertions/deletions, and 2.
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