Maggie Zheng

Keywords: Sugars, Immunotherapy, glycoengineering, protein engineering, bioorthogonal labeling

I’m engineering bispecific antibodies targeting CD19/CD20 and cancer-specific antigens on malignant B cells to improve selective killing of CLL cells while minimizing off-target effects on healthy B cells.

My doctoral research centered on engineering enzymatic platforms for glycan biosynthesis, including the design of promiscuous nucleotidyltransferases that enable one-step activation of prokaryote specific sugar-1-phosphates. By integrating mechanistic enzymology with chemoenzymatic synthesis, I developed scalable approaches to generate diverse nucleotide sugars, enabling systematic exploration of glycan structure–function relationships. I further implemented in vivo strategies to modulate allosteric feedback regulation, uncovering new avenues to disrupt bacterial glycan assembly and pathogenicity.

I aim to integrate carbohydrate and antibody engineering to precisely control glycan-mediated regulation of immune function. By designing glycoengineered antibodies and biologics, I seek to develop next-generation therapeutics with improved specificity, efficacy, and clinical outcomes.

I love traveling, preferably to places with very blue oceans and minimal emails.