Every year millions of people are infected with dengue virus resulting in dengue fever or dengue hemorrhagic fever. Despite decades of research, complete vaccine control has remained elusive. A collaborative team involving members of Brian Kuhlman’s laboratory in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Aravinda de Silva’s laboratory from the Department of Immunology and Microbiology have used protein engineering to stabilize the major surface protein from dengue virus, the E protein, so that it will associate with itself in a way that closely resembles its shape on the surface of the virus. The team demonstrated in animal studies that the stabilized E protein elicits high levels of antibodies that neutralize the virus, demonstrating the feasibility of using protein design to produce vaccines for dengue virus. The work was spearheaded by graduate student Stephan Kudlacek from the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and was recently published in Science Advances.