Lucia Zacchi

Discovery and characterisation of targets and antibodies

In my team, we believe we can help prevent, diagnose, treat, and cure diseases; and we work every day to design new antibody-based therapies and to develop novel approaches to discovering antibodies against difficult targets. Are you also interested in this?

We are actively looking for enthusiastic, team-oriented, fast-learning, and hard-working students with a background in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Microbiology or related fields, and an interest in learning molecular and cellular biology, glycobiology, models of disease, proteomics, or antibody discovery. Previous experience in a molecular biology laboratory is required (we may request a reference letter).

Our goal is to provide you with the best experience, both inside and outside the lab, which will contribute to train you for a career in research. An integral part of the experience in our lab will involve active participation in lab meetings and journal club discussions. We will encourage you to present your findings to the group. We will also endeavour to coach you in effective presentation techniques, scientific writing, ethics in research, good laboratory practices, and team-work.

Available projects for RHD, Honours, and Master students:

Identifying novel red blood cell antigens as a basis for development of biopharmaceuticals to treat infectious disease.

Over 2 million malaria cases and about 400,000 related deaths are reported annually worldwide. This is partly due to Plasmodium falciparum’s resistance to some of the antimalarial drugs and the lack of other effective therapies. Alternative interventions like monoclonal antibodies could be useful as both therapeutics and diagnostics for malaria control and prevention. This project aims to use two complementary approaches; Develop monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) against human red blood cells (RBCs) that are used by the parasite during its life cycle, and determine the usefulness of these mAbs as typing reagents, target the malaria ligands in RBCs, to develop blocking monoclonal antibodies as therapeutic agents.

Development of antibodies against human neutrophil antigens and investigation into TRALI.

Transfusion related acute lung injury (TRALI) is a severe lung syndrome that can occur during or after transfusion of blood or blood products. TRALI is one of the leading causes of death due to transfusions. Antibodies against human neutrophil antigen (HNA) 3a and biological response modifiers (BRMs) such as extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been associated with TRALI onset. This project aims to develop monoclonal antibodies against the two alleles of HNA-3 that can then be used in cell-based assays to detect anti-HNA-3a and anti-HNA-3b antibodies in blood donors, in order to prevent transfusions that lead to TRALI. The project also aims to use a combination of purified EVs and bioactive lipids from blood components as well as commercially available lipids in both in vivo mouse and in vitro transfusion models to investigate how BRM-mediated TRALI develops.