SIC- extra! Associate Professor Esperanza Rivera de Torre

What makes a protein an allergen? Insights from structural biology and epitope mapping

This seminar will present a research trajectory that began with the development of next-generation allergy vaccines based on consensus allergens and mRNA technology designed to address IgE cross-reactivity. This work raised a fundamental question: what intrinsic and extrinsic factors determine whether a protein becomes an allergen?

To address this, we established experimental platforms for high-resolution epitope characterization, enabling systematic mapping of IgE recognition across allergen families. Building on these insights, we initiated a new research direction exploring how the skin microenvironment in atopic dermatitis reshapes immune recognition.

We are working on establishing whether microbial and host-derived enzymes (released under dysbiotic and inflammatory conditions) modify otherwise innocuous proteins through proteolysis and post-translational changes, thereby generating novel or enhanced allergenic epitopes, ultimately reframing allergenicity as a context-dependent property emerging from the dynamic interplay between protein structure and the diseased tissue microenvironment.

Biosketch

Esperanza Rivera de Torre is an Associate Professor at DTU Bioengineering, where she leads the Immunological Biochemistry Group. She completed her PhD in toxin biophysics at Universidad Complutense de Madrid and moved to Denmark in 2020 as a postdoc developing monoclonal antibodies against snake toxins.

Her current research focuses on allergy immunotherapy, IgE cross-reactivity, and epitope characterization, integrating protein chemistry and structural biology to understand immune recognition. She is also co-founder and CTO of Affinity AI, a de novo protein design company.

If you would like to meet with Esperanza, please contact Mia Hamilton Jee.