Research summary
Despite everything we know today about diseases, there are still illnesses we can’t prevent or treat adequately. As Canada Research Chair in Structural Immunology, Dr. Jean-Philippe Julien is studying the molecular details of immunological processes to guide the design of new biomedicines.
Julien is an expert at using innovative approaches across biophysical techniques to gain atomic-level insights into immunity and enable protein engineering from molecular principles. He and his research team are drawing on this expertise to design and evaluate next-generation malaria vaccine candidates. They are also investigating the interactions between antigens and antibodies to combat viral diversity and uncovering the molecular basis of immune cell-surface receptor interactions. Ultimately, they hope to develop next-generation immunotherapies-such as vaccines for malaria, HIV and COVID-19-and antibodies to combat cancer.