Evangelia Christou - Secondment from HPI to UNG

As part of the EXPAND-EV project, Evangelia Christou from the Hellenic Pasteur Institute completed a research secondment at the University of Nova Gorica from April 17 to May 22, 2026. Her stay focused on cell-based panning and screening of phage-displayed nanobody libraries against liver cancer-associated targets, alongside recombinant H1 protein production and purification.

During this period, she performed cell-based panning experiments using IHH cells as negative controls and Huh7.5 cells as positive targets, including depletion, phage amplification, and enrichment steps through iterative rounds of selection. She also participated in monoclonal phage preparation and phage ELISA screening to identify candidate binders recognizing extracellular vesicles (EVs) derived from Huh7.5 cells while showing no binding to EVs from IHH cells. In parallel, Evangelia contributed to recombinant H1 protein expression and purification in bacterial systems, as well as additional bacterial transformation procedures supporting downstream experiments.

This secondment further strengthened her practical expertise in phage display workflows, monoclonal screening, recombinant protein production, and experimental optimization, while promoting collaborative research activities within the EXPAND-EV network.