Building a bioinformatic toolkit for antibody drug discovery

• PhD

The specific target binding capability of monoclonal antibodies has made them essential tools for therapeutic and diagnostic purposes, as well as in research.

However, the same properties that make them so effective at binding their targets makes them challenging to work with bioinformatically and therefore this project aims to develop an open-source bioinformatic toolkit for antibody discovery.
This will include developing a novel error correction method for error-prone Oxford Nanopore long reads, as well as user-friendly analysis pipelines that make it easy for biologists to integrate sequencing into their existing antibody discovery workflows.

The Ritchie laboratory is based within the Genetics and Gene Regulation Division of WEHI. Our lab focuses on developing analysis methods and open-source software that are tailored to new applications of genomic technology in biomedical research.

We work closely with collaborators to ensure that these methods and software are effective, efficient and easy to use. This project will also involve close collaboration with members of WEHI’s Centre for Biologic Therapies, who specialise in antibody discovery.