For fifth-year Baskin Engineering student and the paper’s lead author Nuñez Castrejon, a bout of pneumonia that lingered for months when she was an undergraduate student sparked her interest in studying respiratory illnesses. For DuBois, watching her child go through a serious infection of RSV, which can cause severe respiratory infections in infants/children and the elderly, led her to study the disease. “We have all of these wonderful childhood vaccines that have eliminated so much childhood disease, but there are still a lot of infectious diseases that are really tough on children, and RSV is one of those that causes hospitalizations in children,” DuBois said.

 

Now, the team focuses on bioengineering the structure of RSV’s G protein, which attaches the virus to host cells. The researchers altered the structure of the protein to eliminate its negative effects and while still eliciting a protective response from the immune system in the form of antibodies that bind to the G protein. The researcher’s 2021 paper showed that their engineered G protein was able to stimulate a stronger antibody response than the native G protein. However, it was unclear if the engineered G protein still “looked like” the native protein does on the surface of the virus. The newest study confirms that this engineered G protein looks the same and is recognized by human RSV-fighting antibodies.