Abstract:

My research group develops protein technologies to address fundamental questions in protein folding and immune regulation. Our interdisciplinary program focuses on two areas: fold-switching proteins and transcription factors. (1) Fold-switching proteins access multiple stable conformations in response to subtle changes in sequence or environment. They also expose a central limitation in protein science: predicting how one sequence encodes two folded states. We develop integrated chemical and biological approaches to study fold-switching domains and establish principles that dictate fold selection. We prepare defined protein variants by automated flow synthesis and recombinant expression and uncover surprising structural behavior using biophysical, structural, and computational methods. (2) A major challenge in cancer immunotherapy is restoring effective immune recognition without systemic toxicity. We develop artificial transcription factors (ATFs) composed of multi-subunit zinc finger proteins that directly activate adaptive immune programs and produce antitumor activity. We have developed one ATF that “turns on” a conserved IFNG gene sequence in both mouse and human cells. We are developing protein-based delivery systems for intracellular transport and therapeutic applications, and engineering new variants that control immune cell migration, activation, and proliferation.

1. King, A.; Noblitt, D.; Sherron, O.; Kjerfve, C.; Pless, L.; Truex, N.L. An Artificial Transcription Factor that Induces Potent Interferon-γ Expression in Human Jurkat T Cells. Front. Mol. Med. 2024, 4, 1492370.
2. Kjerfve, C. K.; Kwao, J. K.; Wolfe, J.; Glover, J.; Wood, B.; Golden, C.; Truex, N. Recombinant Expression and Automated Flow Synthesis of Fold-Switching Proteins Derived from Streptococcus Protein G. Biochemistry 2026, 65, 1224–1232.
3. Kwao, J. K.; Kjerfve, C. K.; Glover, J.; Wolfe, J.; Wood, B.; Zihan, Z.; Rassolov, V.; Zhang, J.; Truex, N. Automated Flow Synthesis of Streptococcus Protein G Domains Reveals the Molecular Threshold of Helix-to-Sheet Fold Switching. Submitted. 2026

Bio:

My education and training focus on chemistry, biochemistry, and immunobiology. I earned my B.S. from Purdue University (2007-2011), where I worked with Dr. Ei-ichi Negishi (2010 Nobel Laureate) to optimize palladium catalysts for cross-coupling reactions. I earned my PhD from UC Irvine (2012–2017) with Dr. James Nowick, designing and structurally characterizing peptides derived from amyloidogenic proteins. I completed my postdoctoral studies at MIT with Dr. Bradley Pentelute, developing fast-flow peptide synthesis, therapeutic protein delivery systems, vaccine designs, and cancer immunotherapies. In 2020, I received an NIH F32 fellowship from the National Cancer Institute to develop immunotoxins for cancer vaccines. In 2022, I started my laboratory at the University of South Carolina, where we develop transcription factors to control immune pathways for anticancer and antiviral applications and build new chemical and biological platforms to study and control fold-switching proteins.