Recombinant protein therapeutics play an increasingly important role in the treatment of human diseases. However, antibody responses to these protein drugs can adversely impact their safety and efficacy. High affinity antibody responses are preceded by CD4+ T cell responses, which control or provoke the undesirable antibody responses. BRI has developed a platform technology that can be utilized to rapidly and systematically identify immunogenic “hot spots” within protein therapeutics, visualize T cell responses against these proteins, and rationally de-immunize their sequences at key amino acid positions.

The identification of T-cell epitopes is crucial for the development of effective vaccines against infectious agents and tumors, as well as in the design of Ag-specific modes of immunotherapy for autoimmune and immune-mediated diseases. BRI has developed a tetramer-guided epitope mapping (TGEM) approach to rapidly identify T-cell epitopes. The TGEM approach is based on the direct detection of binding of the TCR to the MHC–peptide complex. It has the advantage of reflecting the dominant T-cell specificity in the test sample, enabling it to be used with peripheral blood from patients or immunized research participants.

BRI is currently conducting over 400 clinical studies. Our highly trained research staff have access to a dedicated Clinical Research Center, and most importantly, to a cadre of dedicated physicians at BRI and VMFH. We enroll studies from early stage mechanistic efforts through Phase III clinical trials.

We collaborate with industry on a wide range of mechanistic studies. This could include anything from short-course mechanistic/Phase 1-2 studies to probe the immune changes that occur in the context of therapy - to single-cell sequencing of samples from individuals in our biorepository to understand the transcriptional changes and TCRs associated with disease or therapy. We are very interested in understanding what may explain response to therapy across autoimmunity using multiple cutting edge modalities.

BRI partners with scientists around the world, bringing our technology, biorepositories and expertise to global research efforts. We form partnerships across all levels of science and areas of research.