My research focus emerged from early studies of human monoclonal antibody technology using cell cloning approaches. Over the past decades, however, aspects involving molecular biology approaches to human antibody research including phage display technology has been a major interest of mine as well as of the antibody community in general. My research groups has extended the utility of such tools for specific purposes and employed them to further our understanding of antibodies in health and disease, with a focus on allergy, cancer, and infections caused by cytomegalovirus. We have also extended the utility of these molecular evolution tools to the development of carbohydrate binding molecules.

Major achievements:

• Creation of the largest available human monoclonal IgE resource for studies of human IgE and its involvement in allergic disease.
• Definition of human antibodies against neutralization determinants on human cytomegalovirus, an important human pathogen.
• Creation of the basis for evolution of a thermostable carbohydrate module scaffold and implementation of such evolved modules in carbohydrate research. Studies of such modules and their binding to carbohydrates using X-ray and lately also neutron crystallography.
• Establishment of functional platforms for isolation of human antibody probes exploiting phage display technology.