Awards for Sanquin research into agonistic antibody to complement regulator

Gillian Dekkers has been awarded twice for her research in the field of complement. At two conferences she presented her work on the agonistic antibody directed against complement Factor H. This antibody enhances the function of this complement regulator. The aim is to develop this antibody for therapeutic uses in patients with disturbed complement regulation due to for example low levels or mutations in Factor H.

Factor H

The research shows new insights in the working mechanism of the antibody by testing the binding affinity and decay accelerating activity (DAA) of recombinant Factor H in combination with the agonistic antibody to complement C3b in Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR). This showed that not only wild type but also mutated Factor H binding and function seems to be enhanced by the agonistic antibody.

Gillian Dekkers is postdoctoral researcher in the Complement research group of the department Immunopathology under supervision of Ilse Jongerius and Theo Rispens. The work on the agnostic antibody is financially supported by Gemini Therapeutics. 

Photo: Gillian Dekkers at the Aegean Conference on Coplement Therapeutics, where she won a travel award.