Stanford University, United States
Christopher Barnes, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Biology, Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator and Sarafan ChEM-H Institute Scholar at Stanford University, USA. His research leverages interdisciplinary approaches to address fundamental principles of viral-host interactions for therapeutic benefit. Before arriving at Stanford, Christopher earned degrees in psychology and chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and obtained his PhD in molecular pharmacology at the University of Pittsburgh. He then completed postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology in the laboratory of Pamela Bjorkman, where he utilized biophysical approaches to understand how viruses such as HIV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 infect host cells and elicit specific humoral immune responses.
Christopher has made significant contributions to our understanding of antibody-antigen interactions through in-depth structural analysis that detail the specificities and mechanisms of how monoclonal neutralizing antibodies bind viral glycoproteins to prevent infection. Now, the Barnes laboratory aims to combine structural, engineering and in vivo approaches to investigate viral-host interactions and translate this into the rational development of novel immunotherapies and vaccines against emerging RNA viruses.