Dr Ekaterina Nam

Programming synthetic dendritic cells by decorating polymeric scaffold with various effector molecules

Dr Ekaterina Nam’s research focuses on developing synthetic dendritic cells (sDCs) that can direct human immune system towards cancer cell recognition and elimination in a controlled manner. Current research is based on decorating semi-flexible helical polymeric scaffold (polyisocyanides) with various effector molecules (antigens, co-stimulatory molecules) using highly efficient orthogonal reactions (the strain-promoted azide–alkyne click reaction and the sortase-mediated bioconjugation reaction).

Dr Ekaterina Nam is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (AIBN) from 2017. Dr Nam received her undergraduate study at the Moscow State University, Russia and completed her PhD degree under supervision of Prof. Pall Thordarson at the University of New South Wales in 2016.

Key Publications

1. *Gunawan, C.A.; *Nam, E.V.; Marquis, C.P.; Gooding, J. J.; Thordarson, P.; Zhao, C., Scanning Electrochemical Microscopy of Cytochrome c Peroxidase via Orientation-Controlled Immobilisation of Cytochrome c, ChemEectroChem., 2016, 3, 1150–1156. (*equally contributed authors)
2. *Hvasanov, D.; *Nam, E.V.; Peterson, J.R.; Pornsaksit, D.; Wiedenmann, J.; Marquis, C.P.; Thordarson, P., One-Pot Synthesis of High Molecular Weight Synthetic Heteroprotein Dimers Driven by Charge Complementarity Electrostatic Interactions, J. Org. Chem., 2014, 79, 9594−9602. (*equally contributed authors)
3. Nam, E.V.; Zhirnov, A.E.; Litmanovich, E.A.; Melik-Nubarov, N.S.; Grozdova, I.D., The effect of modification with fluorescent groups on the physicochemical characteristics of poly(alkylene oxides), Polymer Science Series A , 2010, 52, 907-913.