Name
Lim Theam Soon
Current Position
Associate Professor
theamsoon@usm.my
Office Telephone
+604-6534852
Qualifications
Freie Universitat Berlin, Dr.rer.nat in Molecular Biology, 2009.
Universiti Sains Malaysia, MSc, 2006.
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, BSc (Hons.), 2001
Affiliations
None
Research Interests
Antibody Engineering, Biosensor, DNA technology, Phage display
Research Overview 1
Antibody Engineering
The role and importance of recombinant human monoclonal antibodies for therapeutics has seen an increase in the number of antibodies going into clinical trials in the last 5 years. His lab applies phage display for the identification of novel human monoclonal antibodies against a diverse set of target antigens. The current focus of the lab is mainly on infectious diseases with the development of several immune antibody libraries. The lab has also developed several other naïve and synthetic antibody libraries for application. The libraries have since been used to develop a panel of different antibodies against several infectious disease biomarkers. Together with several other collaborators, the lab is also working to generate monoclonal antibodies against other diseases.
Research Overview 2
DNA Technology
DNA is the fundamental building block of life, where all the genetic information of a living organism is stored. In addition to that, DNA possesses unique and interesting characteristics that are capable of mediating many other functions in life. The understanding of DNA mechanistic has allowed the development of novel applications surrounding DNA mainly self assembly technologies. Manipulation of DNA is now possible for the purpose of nanostructure formation, logic gate systems and sensing applications. His laboratory is currently pioneering methods to integrate both recombinant antibody technology with DNA nanotechnology for biomedical applications.
Research Overview 3
Selected Publications
1: Fischbach J, Loh Q, Bier FF, Lim TS, Frohme M, Glökler J. Alizarin Red S for Online Pyrophosphate Detection Identified by a Rapid Screening Method. Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 24;7:45085. doi: 10.1038/srep45085. PubMed PMID: 28338022; PubMed
Central PMCID: PMC5364467.
2: Lim TS, Chan SK. Immune Antibody Libraries: Manipulating The Diverse Immune Repertoire for Antibody Discovery. Curr Pharm Des. 2016;22(43):6480-6489. doi:
10.2174/1381612822666160923111924. PubMed PMID: 27669969.
3: Lim BN, Chin CF, Choong YS, Ismail A, Lim TS. Generation of a naïve human single chain variable fragment (scFv) library for the identification of monoclonal scFv against Salmonella Typhi Hemolysin E antigen. Toxicon. 2016 Jul;117:94-101. doi: 10.1016/j.toxicon.2016.04.032. Epub 2016 Apr 14. PubMed
PMID: 27090555.
4: Ismail NF, Lim TS. Site-specific scFv labelling with invertase via Sortase A mechanism as a platform for antibody-antigen detection using the personal glucose meter. Sci Rep. 2016 Jan 19;6:19338. doi: 10.1038/srep19338. PubMed PMID: 26782912; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4726117.
5: Chin CF, Ler LW, Choong YS, Ong EB, Ismail A, Tye GJ, Lim TS. Application of streptavidin mass spectrometric immunoassay tips for immunoaffinity based antibody phage display panning. J Microbiol Methods. 2016 Jan;120:6-14. doi:
10.1016/j.mimet.2015.11.007. Epub 2015 Nov 12. PubMed PMID: 26581498.
6: Hairul Bahara NH, Chin ST, Choong YS, Lim TS. Construction of a Semisynthetic Human VH Single-Domain Antibody Library and Selection of Domain Antibodies against ?-Crystalline of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. J Biomol Screen. 2016 Jan;21(1):35-43. doi: 10.1177/1087057115609144. Epub 2015 Sep 30. PubMed PMID:
26423338.
7: Rahumatullah A, Ahmad A, Noordin R, Lim TS. Delineation of BmSXP antibody V-gene usage from a lymphatic filariasis based immune scFv antibody library. Mol Immunol. 2015 Oct;67(2 Pt B):512-23. doi: 10.1016/j.molimm.2015.07.040. Epub 2015
Aug 12. PubMed PMID: 26277276.
8: Loh Q, Leong SW, Tye GJ, Choong YS, Lim TS. Improved Fab presentation on phage surface with the use of molecular chaperone coplasmid system. Anal Biochem. 2015 May 15;477:56-61. doi: 10.1016/j.ab.2015.02.026. Epub 2015 Mar 10. PubMed PMID:
25769419.
9: Lim BN, Tye GJ, Choong YS, Ong EB, Ismail A, Lim TS. Principles and application of antibody libraries for infectious diseases. Biotechnol Lett. 2014 Dec;36(12):2381-92. doi: 10.1007/s10529-014-1635-x. Epub 2014 Sep 12. Review. PubMed PMID: 25214212.
10: Chin ST, Ignatius J, Suraiya S, Tye GJ, Sarmiento ME, Acosta A, Norazmi MN, Lim TS. Comparative study of IgA VH 3 gene usage in healthy TST(-) and TST(+) population exposed to tuberculosis: deep sequencing analysis. Immunology. 2015 Feb;144(2):302-11. doi: 10.1111/imm.12372. PubMed PMID: 25158076; PubMed Central
PMCID: PMC4298424.
Author Address
