Nishat Tabassum

Nishat Tabassum is a PhD candidate in chemical engineering whose research aims to assess the feasibility of engineering small proteins as alternatives to monoclonal antibody therapeutics. Specifically, Nishat is working to design a non-immunoglobulin protein that targets the cytokine tumor necrosis factor-alpha and prevents it from binding to its receptors, thus preventing an inflammatory response. A common challenge in treating chronic inflammation in autoimmune diseases is that patients may become unresponsive to immunoglobulin-based treatments. Non- immunoglobulin proteins are promising alternatives as they are small and easily produced in peptide synthesizers. Nishat has developed a preliminary model that can significantly speed the identification of promising design targets and offers a clearer understanding of which parameters must be optimized for binder design. As a MathWorks Fellow, Nishat will further develop this model into a more detailed physiologically based pharmacokinetic model with results obtained experimentally. Her work has the potential to advance powerful new therapies for autoimmune diseases, and the MATLAB models and methods she has pioneered may aid other researchers in informing design targets for protein engineering in drug development.