April Slugs & Steins
Research into detection methods for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in blood has rapidly accelerated during the pandemic in response to global health needs. In this virtual seminar, Dr. DuBois will discuss how her lab applied existing knowledge from their research on antiviral antibodies to contribute to understanding the human antibody response to COVID-19 infection and vaccination. Specifically, she will describe her lab’s development of new technology to quickly measure SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels in blood, with results in less than 20 minutes. Dr. DuBois will describe the utility of this technology for COVID-19 studies, as well as the potential to develop this technology as a diagnostic platform to evaluate immunity to other infectious diseases.
Dr. Rebecca DuBois is an Associate Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. Her lab uses protein engineering to investigate human viruses and to develop new vaccines. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at UC San Diego and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France and at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, TN. She lives in Santa Cruz with her husband, UCSC’s Men’s Basketball Coach Ron DuBois, and their two children.