P. Anton van der Merwe

Membrane-mediated cooperativity of antigen receptors and CD2 adhesion receptors in CAR-T cell activation

This study develops a model explaining how nanometre-scale changes in receptor dimensions affect CAR-T cell antigen sensitivity by linking physical principles to experimental observations.

Generation of T cells with reduced off-target cross-reactivities by engineering co-signalling receptors

This study shows that switching CD8 with CD4 co-receptor in cytotoxic T cells reduces off-target cross-reactivity without altering the TCR, enhancing T cell therapy safety.

The 3D affinities of the OT-I TCR to foreign and self-antigens predict their 2D affinities and reveal imperfect antigen discrimination

This paper measures 3D affinities of the OT-I TCR to 19 pMHC complexes and finds they strongly correlate with 2D membrane affinities, revealing imperfect antigen discrimination.

Optimising CAR-T cell sensitivity by engineering matched extracellular sizes between CAR/antigen and CD2/CD58 adhesion complexes

The antigen sensitivity of CAR-T cells can be tuned to match the sensitivity of TCR-T cells by varying the relative extracellular size of CAR/antigen and CD2/CD58 complexes.

Missense variants in human ACE2 modify binding to SARS-CoV-2 Spike

The paper investigates how ACE2 missense variants affect SARS-CoV-2 Spike binding, identifying variants that enhance or inhibit binding and their potential impact on infection risk.