Structural Biology of the Complement System

Dimitrios Morikis received his B.S. in physics from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1983, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from Northeastern University, Boston, in 1985 and 1990, respectively. He was trained in biophysics during his doctoral thesis work, in structural biology during his postdoctoral fellowship in 1990-1993 at the Department of Molecular Biology of The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, California, and in computational chemistry during a senior postdoctoral fellowship in 1999-2001 at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry of the University of California, San Diego. He is currently a member of the research faculty of the Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Riverside. He is also an adjunct associate professor at the Division of Immunology and the Department of Neurobiochemistry of the Beckman Research Institute of the City of Hope, Duarte, California. His research is highly cross-disciplinary, using experimental spectroscopic methods and theoretical computational methods. His current research focuses on immunophysics, structural bioinformatics, bioengineering, and biotechnology, including three-dimensional structure determination, the exploration of structure, dynamics, thermodynamics, and electrostatics of proteins and protein complexes of the immune system, rational drug design, and the design of peptides and small proteins with desired properties.

John D. Lambris received his Ph.D. in biochemistry in 1979. He is a professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and director of the Protein Chemistry Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Using complement as a model system, he applies ideas and methods embodied in engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry, biomedicine, and other fields to study the structure and functions of the complement system. His current research efforts focus on the structural-functional aspects of protein-protein interactions, and the rational design of small size-complement inhibitors. In addition, his research extends to the evolution and developmental aspects of the complement system as well as to viral molecular mimicry and immune evasion strategies.