Welcome to the website for the Plotkin Research Group!

We do research at the interface of biology and physics.

Plotkin Group News:

Recent News:

COVID-19: UBC team using every tool in its science kit to get ahead of virus- Vancouver Sun article June 7, 2020

Predicting the evolution of COVID-19 to help manage future outbreaks - Press Release

Welcome New Group Members!

• Charlotte Barclay (Bioinformatics MSc)
• Gabriel Dall'Alba (Genome Sciences and Technology MSc)

Recent Awards:

Mitacs fellowship award, "Evolutionarily guided rational design of vaccines, antibody therapeutics, and accurate serological assays for COVID-19"

• Congratulations to Pranav, Shawn and Aina!

Congratulations to Shawnand Aina on ther recent fellowship awards:

• Shawn Hsueh: Ecosystem Services, Commercialization Platforms and Entrepreneurship (ECOSCOPE) funding (NSERC CREATE)
• Aina Adekunle: Four Year Doctoral Fellowship (4YF) UBC
• Pranav Garg:

Recent Publications:

• Plotkin SS, Cashman NR "Passive Immunotherapies targeting Aβ and Tau in Alzheimer's disease" Special Issue: Antibody Therapies, Neurobiology of Disease (in press) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbd.2020.105010 (2020)

• Semmler S, Gagné M, Garg P, Pickles SR, Baudouin C, Hamon-Keromen E, Destroismaisons L, Khalfallah Y, Chaineau M, Caron E, Bayne AN, Trempe JF, Cashman NR, Star AT, Haqqani AS, Durcan TM, Meiering E, Robertson J, Grandvaux N, Plotkin SS, McBride HM, and Vande Velde C "TNF receptor–associated factor 6 interacts with ALS-linked misfolded superoxide dismutase 1 and promotes aggregation" The Journal of Biological Chemistry 295 pp3808-3825 (2020)

• Pataer A, Ozpolat B, Shao R, Cashman NR, Plotkin SS, Samuel CE, Lin S, Kabil N, Wang J, Majidi M, Vaporciyan A, Wistuba I, Hung MC, Swisher S, Fang B, Roth JA , "Therapeutic Targeting of the PI4K2A/PKR Lysosome Network is Critical for Misfolded Protein Clearance and Survival in Cancer Cells" Oncogene 39 pp801-813 (2020)

• Wright G, Watanabe TF, Amporndanai K, Plotkin SS, Cashman NR, Antonyuk SV, Hasnain SS, "Purification and Structural Characterization of Aggregation-Prone Human TDP-43 Involved in Neurodegeneratie Diseases" iScience 101159 (2020)

• "Conformation-specific Epitopes in Tau, Antibodies Thereto and Methods Related Thereof" Provision Patent 62/853,121, Inventors: Steven S Plotkin, Neil R Cashman, Johanne Kaplan, Filed May 2020

• "Assays and Compositions for Seriological Detection of Sars-Cov-2" US Provisional Patent #63/027,332, Inventors: Neil R Cashman, Steven S Plotkin, Ebrima Gibbs, Adekunle Aina, Ching-Chung Hsueh, Filed May 2020

Recent Submissions:

• Peng X, Hsueh S, Aina A, Cashman NR and Plotkin SS  "Epitope Scaffolding Using α-synuclein Cyclic Peptides to Generate Oligomer-selective Antibodies for Parkinson’s Disease" (submitted)

• Pokrishevsky E, DuVal MG, McAlary L, Louadi S, Pozzi S, Roman A, Plotkin SS, Dijkstra A, Julien JP, Allison WT, Cashman NR "Tryptophan Residues in TDP-43 and SOD1 Mediate the Cross-seeding and Toxicity of SOD1" (submitted)

• Peng X, Gibbs, E, Silverman JM, Cashman NR and Plotkin SS "A Method for Systematically Ranking Therapeutic Drug Candidates Using Multiple Uncertain Screening Criteria" Statistical Methods in Medical Research (in revision)

• DuVal MG, McAlary L, Habibi M, Garg P, Sher M, Cashman NR, Allison WT and Plotkin SS "Physical Properties of Novel Aggressive and Beneficial SOD1 Mutants Predict Phenotypes Consistent with ALS" (posted on bioRxiv)

We are grateful to the Digital Technology Supercluster, Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Alberta Innovates and the Alberta Prion Research Institute, and Westgrid/Compute Canada for supporting our research.