Mike Zhang

Synopsis:

Dr. Mike Zhang's research focuses on vaccine development against drug addiction and some infectious diseases.

Description:

Dr. Zhang's research program has two main focuses. 1) Vaccine development against addictive drugs. Substance use disorders (SUDs) kill hundreds of thousands of Americans each year. Currently no effective treatments are available to mitigate SUDs. In this area, his lab fabricates multifunctional nanoparticles, which could facilitate the delivery of immune-stimulants, antigenic proteins, and drug haptens. Dr. Zhang's lab conducts animal experiments to study the immunogenicity and pharmacokinetics of the vaccine. The lab's goal is to bring forth effective vaccines to help drug users quit addictions. 2) Vaccine development against infectious diseases. In this area, the lab's main goal is to develop vaccines against two important animal viruses, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV). The lab uses proteins that could self-assemble into virus-like particles (VLPs) as a carrier to deliver viral specific epitopes as potential vaccines. Animal experiments will be conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the vaccines. Dr. Zhang's lab also attempt to apply this VLP platform to develop vaccines against other viral infections. In addition, his lab routinely expresses various proteins in E. coli and develop processes to purify and refold (if necessary) the proteins.