I am an Assistant Professor of Computational Biology at the Department of Biology and Biochemistry of the University of Houston. I am a member of the Center for Nuclear Receptors and Cell Signaling (CNRCS), located at the Science & Engineering Research Center Bldg 545 (SERC, Suite 3007). I work with structural modeling and analysis of protein-ligand complexes that play key roles in cellular immunity. My research will facilitate the development of safer and better personalized immunotherapy treatments, enabling structure-based selection of peptides that can be targeted by the immune system (e.g., tumor neoantigens), and computational prediction of dangerous off-target toxicities.
I attained my bachelor’s degree (BS) in Biomedicine in 2008, at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS, Brazil), and received my master’s degree (MS) in Genetics and Molecular Biology from the same university in 2011. During my doctorate degree (DSc), concluded in 2014, I applied bioinformatics tools to identify molecular features responsible for complex immunological phenomena, such as heterologous immunity. My research enabled in silico predictions of T cell cross-reactivity among viral epitopes, which were later confirmed by in vitro experiments. Later, I developed my postdoctoral studies at the Computer Science Department of Rice University (Houston, TX), with a fellowship from the Computational Cancer Biology Training Program (CCBTP). During this time I worked in collaboration with a team from MD Anderson Cancer Center on the development of structure-based methods that can be used to improve peptide-target selection in personalized cancer immunotherapy. One of the outcomes of this project was the modeling environment HLA-Arena. I am also a permanent contributor of the Brazilian Society of Immunology Blog (SBlogI).
More details can be found in my curriculum vitae.
News
Follow me on Twitter (@DinlerAntunes) for the latest updates.
- My work with Didier Devaurs and Lydia Kavraki on the use of DINC for immunotherapy applications feaured as one of three research projects “Bolstering biomedicine,” at the CASC (Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation) 2021 brochure: “Science at full speed”.
- I will give a talk at the seminar series of the Graduate Program in Cellular and Molecular Biology of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (PPGBCM/UFRGS), in March 12.
- I will give the “Aula Magna” to the Biomedicine class of Estácio de Sá University, in April.
- I will give a talk to the Biomedicine students of Univates University, in August 16.
- I was invited by the new CCBTP fellows to talk about applying to Faculty positions in the US.
- I was interviewd for two episodes of the Bioinformatics and Beyond Podcast, with Leo Elworth. You can hear the episodes here.
- We launch a webserver for ensemble docking with SARS-CoV-2 proteins, DINC-COVID, allowing users to account for receptor flexibility while testing potential drug-inhibitors. A manuscript describing our methods is currently under review, but a preprint version is available on BioRxiv.
- I gave a talk titled “Advancing immunotherapy through structure-based computational analyses” at the Annual Symposioum of the Center for Nuclear Receptor and Cell Signaling (CNRSC). Houston/ZOOM, TX. January 2021.
- I started as an Assistant Professor of Computational Biology at the Department of Biology and Biochemistry of the University of Houston. I am also selecting PhD students and Postdocs to work on my team (more here).
- Our work was advertised at the Rice University News and Media Relations webpage (see here).
- I was selected to represent the CCBTP program during the 30th Annual Keck Research Conference (ARC2020).
- I was one of receipients of the 2020 Immuno-Oncology Young Investigators’ Forum (IOYIF) PhD Postdoc Awards.
- I was awarded the SCI Gold Oral Presentation Award at the 6th Annual SCI Summer Research Colloquium, hosted by the Applied Physics Program of Rice University.
For more, check the News Archive.
Address
3517 Cullen Blvd. Science & Engineering Research Center (SERC) Bldg 545, Suite 3007. Houston, TX 77204-5056