Dr Wibmer, Kurt

Dr Constantinos Kurt Wibmer is an early-career South African virologist, structural biologist, and protein engineer. He received a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand, supervised by Professors Lynn Morris and Penny Moore, focusing on understanding HIV-1 escape and the virus-host interplay that results in broadly neutralising antibodies.
Wibmer began training in protein x-ray crystallography with Dr Peter Kwong and Dr Jason Gorman at the Vaccine Research Center (NIH, Bethesda, USA) during a Fogarty traineeship, and further developed these skills as a postdoctoral research associate with Prof Ian Wilson at Scripps Research (La Jolla, USA). He has since solved dozens of unique protein structures, characterising at atomic resolution the interactions between antibodies and their antigens.
At the National Institute for Communicable Diseaes, he leads a research team hosted at the Centre for HIV and STIs that is currently focused on three research areas, namely the development of novel interventions for snakebite (a neglected tropical disease that kills/maims half a million people every year); the discovery of monoclonal antibodies from horses (supporting One Health goals); and offering structural biology support for collaborative research activities (such as SAR-CoV-2/COVID-19). During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, these data comprised the earliest description of neutralization resistance by variants of concern (VoC).