antibody.work consulted Biomedgraphics for the conceptualization and design an Immunity cover illustration that accompanies the wonderful malaria antibody study from Barista Laboratory at the Ragon Institute.
Caption from the cover: Improvement of antibodies targeting the Plasmodium falciparumcircumsporozoite protein (PfCSP) could have substantial impact on malaria control. In this issue, Kratochvil et al. (2859–2876) engineer a mouse model expressing the inferred germline DNA sequence of a PfCSP-targeting antibody, CIS43, that has prevented malaria in clinical trials and use vaccine immunofocusing and bioinformatic sieving to generate CIS43-variant antibodies. One of these, iGL.CIS43.D3, showed 10-fold improved protective capacity over CIS43 and is the best-in-class malaria-protective antibody identified to date. The mouse model encoding the inferred germline DNA sequence of CIS43 thus “turns back the clock” on the mature antibody (upper left dial) and integrates feedback from somatic hypermutation (upper right dial), structure (lower left dial), and affinity (lower right dial) to guide the selection and engineering of antibody variants. Illustration by Christina Corbaci and Lars Hangartner.