Design of more potent antibodies against C5a, a critical cytokine involved in sepsis. Sepsis is a usually fatal systemic infection often involving the elderly, immunocompromised individuals, and burn victims. We helped the Ward Lab (University of Michigan Pathology Department) to design more potent antibodies to C5a through the interpretation of the NMR structure of porcine C5a. These antibodies show great promise in the treatment of sepsis, based upon initial studies in rats. In addition, we generated a homology model of mouse C5a to facilitate the interpretation of ongoing clinical studies.