Yadong Yu

Research scientist in antibody discovery and engineering

Hayward, California, United States

About

Senior scientist with extensive protein science experience and antibody discovery experience * Proficient in molecular cloning, protein purification and characterization. * Extensive protein-protein interaction assays using BLI and SPR biosensor platforms. * Hands-on phage display antibody discovery, antibody phage library construction. * Developed Python scripts to analyze Sanger sequencing and NGS data of antibody hits. * High success rate in antibody humanization.

Experience

  • Senior research scientist III at Curia
    Feb 2025 - Present · 1 yr 6 mos

  • Senior Scientist at NGM Biopharmaceuticals
    Aug 2022 - Feb 2025 · 2 yrs 7 mos

    • Antibody discovery by phage display: employed different bio-panning strategies to screen antibody from naïve and synthetic phage libraries; carried out phage ELISA, Sanger and NGS sequence analysis, transient expression and purification, target binding by Octet and flow cytometry; adept at epitope masking phage panning to find antibodies for specific epitope on target. Experience of VLP for challenging membrane protein antibody discovery. • Common light chain antibody phage library construction: assembled common light chain libraries from VHs of diverse VDJ combinations and common light chain VKs of choice, achieved great diversity and complete coverage of VDJ genes.

  • Senior Scientist at Nektar Therapeutics
    Nov 2020 - Jun 2022 · 1 yr 8 mos

    • Performed SPR assays for NKTR-288 project from drug candidate nomination to later development: set up SPR assay formats to assess different muteins and PEGylated conjugates in binding to receptor and heparin; provided critical data for drug candidate nomination. • Contributed biophysics analysis to early discovery projects: conducted SPR, DSF, DLS, SEC-MALS biophysical studies to support early discovery; performed protein modeling to assess feasibility of concepts. • Protein expression and isotope labeling. Used cell-free expression system and SILAC tool to incorporate heavy isotope labeled amino acids into protein, achieved 96% incorporation rate, and purified the labeled protein for quantitative MS use.

  • Senior scientist II, Biophysics at TrueBinding (formerly Immutics)
    Aug 2019 - Nov 2020 · 1 yr 4 mos

    • Led the biosensor characterization efforts. Worked on titer measurement, antibody hits screening, affinity measurement, cross-reactivity determination, and epitope binning tasks. Provided support for discovery, engineering, and biology groups. • Established efficient workflows. Achieved batch purification of 96 antibodies in one week, cross-reactivity of a panel of 100+ antibodies against 8 antigens in one week, and epitope binning of a panel of 65 antibodies using two Gators in three weeks.

  • Senior Scientist at LakePharma, Inc.
    Nov 2016 - Aug 2019 · 2 yrs 10 mos

    * From 2016 to mid-2018, I had worked in Protein Chemistry group, where I played 3 roles (1) purifying and characterizing natural or recombinant proteins and delivered products and results in time for more than 20 projects; (2) leading process development for the purification of 4 different non-tagged proteins and established scalable methods to purify them to high purity and yield.; (3) the primary researcher for a 12-month contract project for a client to analyze low-abundance proteins in serum using tools like Western-blot, ELISA, IP/Co-IP, sliver staining, mass spectrometry. * Since mid-2018 I joined Antibody Engineering group to humanized animal antibody leads, and assess if the humanized antibody variants retain affinity to target using BLI/SPR approaches. Separately I developed Python scripts to analyze Sanger sequencing data or NGS data, which saved eighty thousand dollar of licensing fee per year.