TY - JOUR
T1 - Isolation of antigen-specific, disulphide-rich knob domain peptides from bovine antibodies
AU - Macpherson, Alex
AU - Scott-Tucker, Anthony
AU - Spiliotopoulos, Anastasios
AU - Simpson, Catherine
AU - Staniforth, Justin
AU - Hold, Adam
AU - Snowden, James
AU - Manning, Leah
AU - Van Den Elsen, Jean
AU - Lawson, Alastair
PY - 2020/9/4
Y1 - 2020/9/4
N2 - As a novel alternative to established surface display or combinatorial chemistry approaches for the discovery of therapeutic peptides, we present a method for the isolation of small, cysteine-rich domains from bovine antibody ultralong complementarity-determining regions (CDRs). We show for the first time that isolated bovine antibody knob domains can function as autonomous entities by binding antigen outside the confines of the antibody scaffold. This yields antibody fragments so small as to be considered peptides, each stabilised by an intricate, bespoke arrangement of disulphide bonds. For drug discovery, cow immunisations harness the immune system to generate knob domains with affinities in the picomolar to low nanomolar range, orders of magnitude higher than unoptimized peptides from naïve library screening. Using this approach, knob domain peptides that tightly bound Complement component C5 were obtained, at scale, using conventional antibody discovery and peptide purification techniques.
AB - As a novel alternative to established surface display or combinatorial chemistry approaches for the discovery of therapeutic peptides, we present a method for the isolation of small, cysteine-rich domains from bovine antibody ultralong complementarity-determining regions (CDRs). We show for the first time that isolated bovine antibody knob domains can function as autonomous entities by binding antigen outside the confines of the antibody scaffold. This yields antibody fragments so small as to be considered peptides, each stabilised by an intricate, bespoke arrangement of disulphide bonds. For drug discovery, cow immunisations harness the immune system to generate knob domains with affinities in the picomolar to low nanomolar range, orders of magnitude higher than unoptimized peptides from naïve library screening. Using this approach, knob domain peptides that tightly bound Complement component C5 were obtained, at scale, using conventional antibody discovery and peptide purification techniques.
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000821
DO - 10.1371/journal.pbio.3000821
M3 - Article
VL - 18
JO - PLOS Biology
JF - PLOS Biology
SN - 1545-7885
IS - 9
M1 - e30000821
ER -