Our research program applies protein engineering technologies to develop physiological molecular targeting agents for molecular diagnostics and targeted therapy, with a focus on oncology and infectious disease. We balance (1) fundamental study of molecular evolution and protein biophysics, which empowers our protein engineering efforts; and (2) application of these advances to develop non-invasive diagnostics and therapeutics for clinical challenges in oncology and infectious disease. Our research is highly interdisciplinary including scientists, engineers, and collaborators across Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, Biomedical Engineering, Pharmacology, Chemistry, Oncology, Physiology, Medicinal Chemistry, Radiology, and more. We appreciate the support of the National Institutes of Health, the American Cancer Society, the University of Minnesota, and biotechnology partners.

Research Group

Support Ben Hackel's Research

Education

• B.S., Chemical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2003
• Ph.D., Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2009
• Postdoctoral Fellow, Radiology, Stanford University, 2009-2011

Honors and Awards

• Institute for Engineering in Medicine Faculty Career Development Award
• College of Science and Engineering Guillermo Borja Career Development Award
• American Cancer Society Research Scholar

Selected Publications

• Blanchard, P.L., Knick, B., Whelan, S., and Hackel, B.J., “Hyperstable synthetic mini-proteins as effective ligand scaffolds” ACS Syn. Bio. 2023, 12, 3608-3622
• McConnell, A., Batten, S.L., and Hackel, B.J., “Determinants of developability and evolvability of synthetic miniproteins as ligand scaffolds” J. Mol. Biol. 2023, 435 168339 
• Golinksi, A.W.*, Schmitz, Z.*, Nielsen, G.H., Johnson, B., Saha, D., Appiah, S., Hackel, B.J.*, and Martiniani, S.*, “Predicting and interpreting protein developability via transfer of convolutional sequence representation” ACS Syn. Bio. 2023, 12 2600-2615
• McConnell, A. and Hackel, B.J., “Protein engineering via sequence-performance mapping” Cell Systems 2023, 8, 656-666
• Crabtree, A.A., Boehnke, N., Bates, F.S., and Hackel, B.J., “Consequences of poly(ethylene oxide) and poloxamer P188 on transcription in healthy and stressed myoblasts”, PNAS 2023, 120 e2219885120
• Vunnam, N., Been, M.J., Huber, E., Paulson, C., Szymonski, S., Hackel, B.J.*, Sachs, J.N.*, “Discovery of a non-competitive TNFR1 antagonist affibody with picomolar monovalent potency that does not affect TNFR2 function”, Mol. Pharm. 2023 20, 1884-1897
• Hassler, J., Crabtree, A.A., Liberman, L., Bates, F.S., Hackel, B.J., Lodge, T.P., “Effect of bottlebrush poloxamer architecture on binding to liposomes” Biomacromolecules 2023, 24, 449-461
• Lewis, A.K., Harthorn, A., Johnson, S.M., Lobb, R.L., and Hackel, B.J., “Engineered protein-small molecule conjugates empower selective enzyme inhibition” Cell Chem. Biol. 2022, 29, 328-338. 
• DeJong, M.P., Ritter, S.C., Fransen, K.A., Tresnak, D.T., Golinski, A.W., and Hackel, B.J., “A platform for deep sequence-activity mapping and engineering antimicrobial peptides” ACS Synthetic Biology 2021, 10 2689-2704
•  Golinski, A.W., Mischler, K.M., Laxminarayan, S., Neurock, N.L., Fossing, M., Pichman, H., Martiniani, S., and Hackel, B.J., “High-throughput developability assays enable library-scale identification of producible protein scaffold variants” PNAS 2021, 118, e2026658118
• Bam, R., Lown, P.S, Stern, L.A., Sharma, K., Wilson, K.E., Bean, G.R., Lutz, A.M., Paulmurugan, R., Hackel, B.J., Dahl, J., Abou-Elkacem, L., “Efficacy of affibody-based ultrasound molecular imaging of vascular B7-H3 for breast cancer detection” Clin. Cancer Res. 2020 26, 2140-2150