Final Report Summary - SHERPA (Structure of herpesviral cell access)
As result of the scientific work, SHERPA provided the first method for producing at biochemical quality a more representative form of herpesviral gB fusion factor, made possible a first analysis of its folding, suggesting future work to understand how this viral protein performs its role in the entry of Herpes viruses into target cells and allowed to answer the important question on possible missing antigenic elements in HCMV gB truncated ectodomain, the latter exploited at some success to develop anti-CMV subunit vaccine candidates. Furthermore, SHERPA achievements constitute entirely the deliverable 5.6 of European Union (EU)-funded project ComplexINC (grant agreement No. 270089), in which SHERPA has been included, with SHERPA researcher enrolled as local scientific manager of iBET partnership in Complex INC consortium.
The associated training was particular successful in merging animal cell biotechnology and membrane protein science with the previous expertise in molecular virology of the researcher. This merging is now continuing with the researcher managing more projects related to human and human-infecting virus membrane proteins for biochemical and, possibly, structural study. The researcher has been, indeed, enrolled as senior scientist at iBET where, alongside refining the study of herpesviral fusion factors towards a better structure-function understanding of this class of proteins, he is contributing the overall activity of iBET, one of the largest CRO in Portugal, with constant research contract services from international biotech industry.