mRNA Display-based High Affinity Peptide Screening

Limiting peptides by forming disulfide bonds or presenting peptides to the surface of known protein scaffolds (such as antibody scaffolds), and purifying and displaying these limiting peptides in vitro can achieve higher affinity. CD BioSciences has accumulated rich experience in peptide research. Using its peptide discovery platform based on mRNA display technology, it can screen peptide molecules with higher affinity for drug delivery and therapeutic research.

The Importance of High Affinity Peptides

At present, most therapeutic peptides available on the market are naturally occurring hormones or protein fragments, which are accidentally found to have therapeutic effects. However, the limited available natural resources have brought difficulties to the development of new candidate peptide drugs. Traditional peptides have some shortcomings that must be addressed in biomedical applications, including relatively low affinity or specificity for biological targets compared with affinity molecules based on antibodies and protein scaffolds, poor stability in vivo due to rapid degradation of enzymes, and rapid elimination from circulation due to their small size. Looking to the future, it will become increasingly important for scientists to develop new high affinity and specific peptides for the desired targets.

Fig. 1 Affinity Comparison of Different Peptides. (Saw, et al., 2021)

mRNA Display for High Affinity Peptides

The prerequisite for realizing various medical applications is to identify peptides with antibody like high affinity and specificity for their targets. As part of their efforts to address these limitations, researchers used cyclopeptide libraries to screen peptide ligands for desired protein targets at high throughput. Although cyclopeptide libraries based on end-to-end disulfide bonds are commercially available, disulfide bonds are easily cleaved in the intracellular reducing environment. Recently, high affinity ligands targeting specific targets have proved their potential as therapeutic agents in clinical trials. Using a platform that can build a cyclopeptide library or a highly restricted bicyclopeptide library based on engineering synthetic tRNA technology, high affinity and high specificity peptide ligands targeting many different types of protein targets have been successfully separated and identified through mRNA display technology. These cyclic high affinity peptides are actively used in various biomedical applications, some of which have entered clinical trials.

Our Services

Based on mRNA display technology, CD BioSciences can provide global customers with screening and development services of high affinity peptides to support global customers in basic research and drug discovery. In high affinity screening, it is difficult for linear peptides to form a pre organizational structure that can resist degradation and achieve the required high affinity at the same time. Therefore, we build a restricted cyclopeptide library to screen target molecules. Our high affinity peptide screening service process:

1. DNA library design, including sequences with cyclization effect at characteristic sites;
2. Construct mRNA display peptide library, transcribe and translate in cell-free system to construct mRNA-peptide complex;
3. For display screening of target cells, repeat the display cycle and amplify the DNA sequence by PCR;
4. Verify the binding affinity of the selected peptide.

Service Features

CD BioSciences has many years of project development experience in peptide discovery. Based on the mRNA display technology platform, it can provide customers with screening services for various peptides. If you are interested in our services, please contact us for more details.

Reference

1. Saw, P. E., Xu, X., Kim, S., & Jon, S. (2021). Biomedical Applications of a Novel Class of High-Affinity Peptides. Accounts of chemical research, 54(18), 3576–3592.

Related Services

• mRNA Display-based Cell-penetrating Peptides Screening
• mRNA Display-based Highly Stable Peptide Screening