Charles Wynter

Mentored by: Paulmurugan Ramasamy (Radiology)
22-23 Small Grant recipient 

Researchers have been trying to develop more effective cancer treatments and screening methods due to the diversity of cancer and its ability to acquire resistance to chemotherapy. These newly developed treatments include immunotherapies, which utilize immune cells already present in the body to fight off cancer. However since immunotherapies aren’t effective for all patients, Charles Wynter’s project, under their mentor, Dr. Ramasamy Paulmurugan, aims to develop a method of patient screening that would allow doctors to determine which patients are good candidates for immunotherapies. Fibronectin type III (FN3), a protein scaffold that has been used to create high binding affinity binders, has shown promising results in cancer research. In this regard, Charles has been engineering a small, novel CD3-fibronectin protein that can bind to T-lymphocytes (immune cells) in the cancer microenvironment for immunodiagnostic imaging. Charles’ project used yeast surface display to engineer the protein complex and test its efficacy by selecting for yeast cells presenting FN3 protein with high affinity to the CD3 antigen. Charles will ultimately test the capability of this protein to be an immunodiagnostic and immunotherapeutic for cancer patients.

Charles Wynter (‘24) is majoring in Biology (Molecular, Cellular, Developmental) at Stanford.