Mavis Agbandje-McKenna, Ph.D., a professor in the University of Florida’s College of Medicine’s department of biochemistry and molecular biology, discusses her research on the atomic structure of viruses as a way to develop gene therapies.

Her lab’s research interests are focused on the structural, biochemical and molecular elucidation of the interactions that govern life processes. Using structural biology tools, namely X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy, combined with other biophysical approaches, biochemistry and molecular biology,  Agbandje-Mckenna and her team study members of the Geminiviridae, Circoviridae, and Parvoviridae ssDNA virus families to ultimately develop therapeutic disease treatments, in the form of capsid assembly disrupters, viral vaccines, foreign antigen delivery vehicles and gene therapy vectors.