Pharmaceutically acceptable FN3 polypeptides for human treatments

Abstract

Disclosed herein are proteins that include an immunoglobulin fold and that can be used as scaffolds. Also disclosed herein are nucleic acids encoding such proteins and the use of such proteins in diagnostic methods and in methods for evolving novel compound-binding species and their ligands.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This continuation application claims the benefit of continuation-in-part application, U.S. Ser. No. 09 / 688,566, filed Oct. 16, 2000, continuation-in-part application, U.S. Ser. No. 09 / 515,260, filed Feb. 29, 2000, utility application, U.S. Ser. No. 09 / 456,693, filed Dec. 9, 1999, and provisional application U.S. Ser. No. 60 / 111,737, filed Dec. 10, 1998, (now abandoned).BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] This invention relates to protein scaffolds useful, for example, for the generation of products having novel binding characteristics. [0003] Proteins having relatively defined three-dimensional structures, commonly referred to as protein scaffolds, may be used as reagents for the design of engineered products. These scaffolds typically contain one or more regions which are amenable to specific or random sequence variation, and such sequence randomization is often carried out to produce libraries of proteins from which desired products ma...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention provides a new family of proteins that can be designed to bind to any compound of interest. These proteins are derived from a scaffold called fibronectin type III (Fn3) and are designed to have optimal folding, stability, and solubility under conditions that normally lead to the loss of structure and function in antibodies. These proteins can be used as scaffolds to create new molecules that can bind to any target compound with high affinity. The invention features randomized or mutated scaffold proteins, non-antibody proteins, and fusion proteins with Fn3 domains. The Fn3 domain-containing proteins have been found to bind to compounds with high affinity and can be derived from a variety of reference proteins.

Problems solved by technology

These two loops have been randomized and products selected for antigen binding, but thus far the framework appears to have somewhat limited utility due to solubility problems.

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