General
Guest Lecture by Maurits den Boer
Title: "Uncovering serological antibody repertoires in health and disease by mass spectrometry"
Host: Gestur Vidarsson
Maurits den Boer is a postdoc in the Heck lab at Utrecht University, where he develops methods for studying antibody repertoires by mass spectrometry. He performed his PhD on “Exploring Humoral Immune Responses by Mass Spectrometry” in the same lab, focusing extensively on the characterization of antibodies through mass analysis. This involved the study of antibodies and their interactions by native MS and mass photometry, but also the development of top-down MS approaches for de novo sequencing. Together with prof. Albert Heck, he recently founded the startup company Abvion to realize the development of a next-generation of antibody therapeutics discovered by MS. In his talk will be about the progress the lab has made towards this goal. He will first discuss LC-MS clonal fingerprinting, which provides a quantitative overview of the antibodies present in serological samples. Subsequently, he will turn our focus to MS-based approaches for de novo sequencing of endogenous clones. Finally, a glimpse into the future will be provided, envisioning how MS could complement existing B cell-based approaches in research and antibody discovery.