Chemistry and Biochemistry 2016
Area of Doctoral Study: Chemistry
Undergraduate Institution: Edinboro University of Pennsylvania
Research Advisor: William LaCourse, Ph.D.
Current Position: Chemist Reviewer, Food and Drug Administration, Generic Drug Applications
Description of Research
My research focuses on carbohydrate profiling of therapeutic glycoproteins. I use an integrated approach of anion exchange chromatography, electrochemistry, mass spectrometry, multi-enzyme analysis and bioinformatics. The emergence and expansion of glycosylated biologics in the biotechnology industry requires companies to determine the oligosaccharide content of the protein and ensure glycoform consistency from lot-to-lot, which is of importance due to the profound effect glycosylation patterns can have on the activity, half-life, and immunogenicity of the recombinant protein in the body.
In addition to my graduate research, I assist with a large collaborative project funded by DARPA called BioMOD, which stands for “biologically-derived medicines on demand”. A major part of this project dives into the world of biosimilar drug comparison, which is an increasingly explored topic of research. My responsibilities for the analytics sub-team include protein characterization by enzyme digestion and sequence coverage analysis, glycoprofiling techniques, writing analytical reports, and assembling biweekly slide decks for full team teleconference data discussion and progress.