Aswin Natarajan

My research utilizes biophysical, structural and molecular biology tools combined with functional analysis to understand the structure/functions relationships of proteins involved in immunological pathways. One area of research is about understanding the topology of the T cell receptor (TCR)-CD3 complex in the T cell, the machinery involved in recognizing foreign and cancer antigens by using multitudes of techniques including a novel photo-crosslinking methodology with unnatural amino acids, paramagnetic relaxation enhancement through nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), computational docking, 2D affinity assays and functional analysis. Another area of research involves identifying the structural and molecular basis of recognition of phosphoantigens, which is over-expressed in certain cancers, by T cells using NMR spectroscopy. This research provides new insights into designing and improving immunotherapies through modulating the TCR-CD3 pathway.