Current Research and Scholarly Interests
The focus of the Foung Laboratory is to define immune correlates of protection against hepatitis C virus and other viral pathogens. More specifically, our goal is to define protective humoral immunity to viral pathogens through the isolation, biochemical and functional characterization of broadly neutralizing human or nonhuman primate monoclonal antibodies. Dependent on the pathogen, approaches to isolate these antibodies include yeast surface IgG display or single-cell cloning. These efforts will create high-resolution, functional maps of linear and nonlinear epitopes comprising the major binding sites of both isolate-specific and broadly neutralizing antibodies for rational vaccine design.
