Group Leader
Dr.
Werner Braun, Prof.
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Werner Braun is Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, Texas. He received his academic and professional training at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, in the group of Dr. Kurt Wüthrich, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2002. Dr. Braun spent two years at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan, as a research fellow of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science in the laboratory of Dr. N. Go. In 1984 he returned as an Oberassistent to Dr. Wüthrich’s laboratory at the ETH and was promoted in 1987 to Privatdozent for Biophysics. In 1995 he was recruited as Professor and core member of the Sealy Center for Structural Biology at UTMB Galveston. His research interests include the development of novel computational tools for the analysis of antigens of allergens and infectious diseases. As part of this research theme his research group established the 3D Structural Database of Allergens, SDAP, as a service for the allergy community. Besides the development of several computational tools, such as GETAREA, Episearch or Cross-React, he also participated in several collaborations of NIH-funded research projects on ragweed and cedar pollen, peanut, and house dust mite allergens. The software tools of the Braun group turned out to be also useful to understand the structural basis of immune recognition and guide the design of new immunogens for encephalitic and arthralgic alphaviruses. His research group demonstrated as a proof of principle that a broad immune protection can be achieved by a single antigen as a multivalent vaccine using sequence and 3D-structural analysis of Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus (VEEV) and Chikungunya (CHIKV). A 3D Mosaikcon protein, a fragment of the E2 protein that contains epitope residues of the diverse VEEV and CHIKV has a broad antibody response. |
Group Members
Surendra Negi, Ph.D.
Office Assistant: Rebecca Whitton