Page 30 - The Hormel Institute 2024 Annual Report

30 | THE HORMEL INSTITUTE
// UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
In August 2023, my lab relocated from Penn State to The Hormel Institute, moving four graduate students, two postdocs, and myself,
along with our families. After settling in, we welcomed an additional graduate student, lab manager, and another postdoc, expanding our team to 10 members. We are the largest lab relocation to The Hormel Institute to-date and we are excited to make a big splash.
Once the lab was fully operational, projects made significant progress, including finalizing our B19 project. We found that the human parvovirus B19 circulates in the blood stream undetected because it binds our own proteins to the outside of the capsid. This is a new finding that may relate to other virus infections.
We have three lab members currently studying different aspects of human papillomavirus, a precursor to certain cancers, and have made several new discoveries that can improve the current vaccine or lead to antivirals.
Another student completed an exciting new study on a Powassan virus capsid, which shows
promise as a potential vaccine to prevent this severe tick-borne disease that is quickly spread- ing across the United States.
We’ve made remarkable strides in identifying antibodies capable of neutralizing all poliovirus serotypes—a breakthrough that could be pivotal in eradicating the virus once and for all. Using biochemical methods and cryoEM epitope map- ping, we have identified novel antibody binding sites on poliovirus capsids and determined locations on polioviruses that may be targeted for cross-serotype neutralization.
In my role as the CryoEM Scientific Director,
we added two reconstruction specialists to assist in partnership with collaborators to solve structures and a cryoEM technician joined the cryoEM core to assist with the CryoElectron Microscope usage, as well as the anticipated installation and operation of the Arctis equip- ment to perform tomography services. This plasma dual-beam microscope will drastically increase our capabilities of data collection using tomography on the Titan Krios, allowing us to see inside of the samples we are viewing.
Benjamin Waddey, Sanghati Roy Chowdhury, Jason Porta, Precious Orji, Sayan Das, Caroline Langley, Susan Hafenstein, Kyle Messina, Jennifer Boyle, Ajit Singh, Hyunwook Lee, Janarjan Bhandari and Preston McCourt.