Biology subjects

Beveridge, R.

Publications and source records attributed to Beveridge, R..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2020

cGAMP loading enhances the immunogenicity of VLP vaccines

Cyclic GMP-AMP (cGAMP) is an immunostimulatory second messenger produced by cGAS that activates STING. Soluble cGAMP acts as an adjuvant when administered with antigens. cGAMP is also incorporated into enveloped virus particles during budding. We hypothesised that inclusion of the adjuvant cGAMP within viral vaccine vectors would promote adaptive immunity against vector antigens. We immunised mice with virus-like particles (VLPs) containing the HIV-1 Gag protein and VSV-G. Inclusion of cGAMP within these VLPs augmented splenic VLP-specific CD4 and CD8 T cell responses. It also increased VLP- and VSV-G-specific serum antibody titres and enhanced in vitro virus neutralisation. The superior antibody response was accompanied by increased numbers of T follicular helper cells in draining lymph nodes. Vaccination with cGAMP-loaded VLPs containing haemagglutinin induced high titres of influenza A virus neutralising antibodies and conferred protection following subsequent influenza A virus challenge. Together, these results show that incorporating cGAMP into VLPs enhances their immunogenicity, making cGAMP-VLPs an attractive platform for novel vaccination strategies. Short summarycGAMP is an innate immune signalling molecule that can be transmitted between cells by inclusion in enveloped virions. This study demonstrates enhanced immunogenicity of HIV-derived virus-like particles containing cGAMP. Viral vectors loaded with cGAMP may thus be potent vaccines.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2019

Native mass spectrometry can effectively predict PROTAC efficacy

Protein degraders, also known as proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs), are bifunctional small molecules that bring an E3 ubiquitin ligase and a protein of interest (POI) into proximity, thus promoting ubiquitination and degradation of the targeted POI [1-3]. Despite their great promise as next-generation pharmaceutical drugs, the development of new PROTACs is challenged by the complexity of the system, which involves binary and ternary interactions between components. Here, we demonstrate the strength of native mass spectrometry (nMS), a label-free technique, to provide novel insight into PROTAC-mediated protein interactions. We show that nMS can monitor the formation of ternary E3-PROTAC-POI complexes and detect various intermediate species in a single experiment. A unique benefit of the method is its ability to reveal preferentially formed E3-PROTAC-POI combinations in competition experiments with multiple substrate proteins, thereby positioning it as an ideal high-throughput screening strategy during the development of new PROTACs.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2019

A synthetic peptide library for benchmarking crosslinking mass spectrometry search engines

We have created synthetic peptide libraries to benchmark crosslinking mass spectrometry search engines for different types of crosslinker. The unique benefit of using a library is knowing which identified crosslinks are true and which are false. Here we have used mass spectrometry data generated from measurement of the peptide libraries to evaluate the most frequently applied search algorithms in crosslinking mass-spectrometry. When filtered to an estimated false discovery rate of 5%, false crosslink identification ranged from 5.2% to 11.3% for search engines with inbuilt validation strategies for error estimation. When different external validation strategies were applied to one single search output, false crosslink identification ranged from 2.4% to a surprising 32%, despite being filtered to an estimated 5% false discovery rate. Remarkably, the use of MS-cleavable crosslinkers did not reduce the false discovery rate compared to non-cleavable crosslinkers, results from which have far-reaching implications in structural biology. We anticipate that the datasets acquired during this research will further drive optimisation and development of search engines and novel data-interpretation technologies, thereby advancing our understanding of vital biological interactions.

bioinformatics↗