Button to scroll to the top of the page.
GEORGIOU, GEORGE

George Georgiou

Professor
McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering, Molecular Biosciences

Dula D. Cockrell Centennial Chair in Engineering #2 (Holder)


gg@che.utexas.edu

Phone: 512-471-6975

Office Location
NMS 1.118

Postal Address
200 E DEAN KEETON ST
AUSTIN, TX 78712

Laboratory of Protein Therapeutics and Applied Immunology: Since 2009 the Georgiou laboratory has been focused on the discovery and development of protein therapeutics and on the analysis of adaptive immune responses.   Current projects include:

  • Engineering and preclinical/clinical development of human enzyme therapeutics for the treatment of solid tumors and leukemias
  • Development of methods for the molecular-level identification of the human antibody repertoire in blood and in secretions
  • Analysis of the antibody repertoire elicited by viral infection (e.g. HIV-1) and vaccination to aid the development of more efficient vaccination stategies
  • Engineering of antibody therapeutics displaying enhanced ability to recruit cytotoxic leukocytes and blood proteins (complement) for the effective clearance of pathogens

Earlier work by the Georgiou lab had focused on redox homeostasis and protein biogenesis in bacteria and on the development of platform technologies for protein expression and engineering. These studies led to a number of mechanistic advances and to new technologies that are being used commercially for therapeutic protein manufacturing and protein engineering. 

Dr. Georgiou is co-inventor of 51 issued and >67 pending US patents and . Notably, 29 different technology suites (comprising either one or multiple patents) have been licensed to major pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.   He is co-inventor on the foundational patents for one approved antibody (obiltoxaximab), one therapeutic protein in phase III (pegzilarginase) and three pre-IND programs to enter clinical testing by Q2 2020.  

Select Recent Publications

Lindesmith, L.C., McDaniel, J.R., Changela, A., Varardi, R., Kerr S.A., Constantini, V., Brewer-Jensen, P.D., Mallory, M.L., Voss, W.N., Boutz, D.R., Blazeck, J. J., Ippolito, G.C., Vinje, J., Kwong, P.D., Georgiou, G. and Baric, R. “Boosted Broad Binding/Blockade Antibodies Dominate the Serological Repertoire to Norovirus Vaccine” Immunity 50: 1530-1541(2019) PMID: 31216462 DOI: 10.1016/j.immuni.2019.05.007 

Lee, J., Paparoditis, P., Horton, A.P., Frühwirth, A., McDaniel, J.R., Jung, J., Boutz, D.R., Hussein, D.A., Tanno, Y., Pappas, L., Ippolito, G.C., Corti, D., Lanzavecchia, A. and G. Georgiou, “Persistent Antibody Clonotypes Dominate the Serum Response to Influenza over Multiple Years and Repeated Vaccinations,” Cell Host Microbe 25:367-376 (2019) PMID: 30795981DOI: 10.1016/j.chom.2019.01.010

Johnson, E.L., Doria-Rose, N.A., Gorman, J., Bhiman, J.N., Schramm, C.A., Vu, A.Q., Law, W.H., Zhang, B., Bekker, V., Karim, S.S.A., Ippolito, G.C., Morris, L., Moore, P.L. Kwong, P.D., Mascola, J.R. and G. Georgiou, “Sequencing HIV-neutralizing antibody exons and introns reveals detailed aspects of lineage maturation” Nature Communications9:4136 (2018) PMID: 30297708 DOI:10.1038/s41467-018-06424-6

Triplett, T.A., Garrison, K.C., Marshall, N., Donkor, M., Blazeck, J., Lamb, C., QerqezA., Dekker,J.D.,Tano, Y. Lu, W-C., Karamitros, S.K., Ford, K., Tan, B., Zhang, M., McGovern, K., Coma, S., Kumada, Y., Yamany, M.S., Sentandreu, S., Fromm, G., Tiziani, S., Schreiber, T.H., Manfredi, M., Ehrlich, L.I.R., StoneE., and G. Georgiou, “Reversal of Indoleamie 2,3-Dioxygenase-Mediated Cancer Immune Suppression by Systemic Kynurenine Depletion with a Therapeutic Enzyme,” Nature Biotechnology 36:758-764(2018) PMID: 30010674. DOI: 10.1038/nbt.4180 

  • Select Honors, Awards

     

  • 2015 National Academy of Inventors 

     

  • 2015 American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

  • 2014 Inventor of the Year, U. Texas, Austin, 2014

  • 2014 Named as one of “Top 20 Translational Researchers,” Nature Biotechnology

  • 2011 Elected to National Academy of Medicine (NAM) 

  • 2008 Named as one of “100 Eminent Chemical Engineers of the Modern Era,” AIChE

  • 2007 Jay Bailey Award, Society of Biological Engineers                                                                          

  • 2007 AMGEN Award in Biochemical Engineering                                 

  • 2005 National Academy of Engineering (NAE)