Study Finds Improved Method for Capturing Proteins Holds Promise for Biomedical Research

Antibodies are the backbone of the immune system—capable of targeting proteins associated with infection and disease. They are also vital tools for biomedical research, the development of diagnostic tests and for new therapeutic remedies. Producing antibodies suitable for research however, has often been a difficult, costly and laborious undertaking.

Now, John Chaput and his colleagues at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University have developed a new way of producing antibody-like binding agents and rapidly optimizing their affinity for their target proteins. Such capture reagents are vital for revealing the subtleties of protein function, and may pave the way for improved methods of detecting and treating a broad range of diseases.

The team's results appear in today's issue of the journal ChemBioChem.

Antibodies are Y-shaped structures, capable of binding in two or more places with specific target proteins. Synthetic antibodies are much simpler forms that attempt to mimic this behavior. As Chaput explains, creating affinity reagents with strong binding properties can be accomplished by combining two weak affinity segments on a synthetic scaffold. The resulting affinity reagent, if properly constructed, can amplify the binding properties of the individual segments by two or three orders of magnitude.

"This dramatic change in affinity has the ability to transform ordinary molecules into a high affinity synthetic antibody," Chaput says. "Unfortunately, the chemistry used to make these reagents can be quite challenging and often requires a lot of trial-and-error. With NIH funding, my group has reduced the complexity of this problem to simple chemistry that is user friendly and easily amenable to high throughput automation. Such technology is absolutely necessary if we want to compete with traditional monoclonal antibody technology. "

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Source-Eurekalert