Dr Constantinos Kurt Wibmer

Dr. Constantinos Kurt Wibmer is an early-to-mid-career investigator from Johannesburg, South Africa, and Director of the Wits Health Consortium’s VїPER (Venom & Vaccine Immunotherapeutics & Immunogens Protein Engineering Research) division.

Dr. Wibmer received his PhD in 2016 from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa (supervised by Professors Lynn Morris and Penny Moore), which focused on understanding HIV-1 escape and the virus-host interplay that results in broadly neutralising monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). He began his training in protein x-ray crystallography with Drs. Peter Kwong and Jason Gorman at the Vaccine Research Center (NIH, Bethesda, USA) during a Fogarty AITRP traineeship, and further developed these skills as a postdoctoral research associate with Prof Ian Wilson at Scripps Research (La Jolla, USA). More recently, Kurt has trained in cryo-EM at EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland).

He has since solved dozens of unique protein structures, characterising at atomic resolution the interactions between antibodies and their antigens. His SARS-CoV-2 research was the first to describe neutralization resistance by variants of concern (VoC) and was instrumental in reshaping the global vaccine response.

As an independent researcher Dr. Wibmer has focused his attention on developing novel antivenom biologics to treat snakebite envenoming. He developed a rapid, high-throughput pipeline for isolating native mAbs from horses (funded through The Royal Society and Wellcome, UK) which he is currently employing to discover novel lead candidates for next-generation mAb-based antivenom.

This mAb discovery is coupled with structural biology to design extremely broad, potent, and thermostable biologics for use in Africa and the developing world.