Phage Display

In the past 10 years, biologicals (therapeutics based on proteins, antibodies- or peptides) have grown into the fastest expanding class of approved therapeutics and currently over 900 first-in-class biologicals are in clinical development for a broad range of diseases, including cancer, chronic inflammation (rheumatoid arthritis) and cardiovascular diseases. The design of new target specific proteins, be it antibodies or peptides, has been profoundly accelerated by a technique called “phage display”. Phage display allows selection of protein clones for specific epitopes from a phage-displayed protein library with a very high diversity (often >10⁹ protein clones) and obviates the need for immunization (see figure).  After selection (“biopanning”) and subsequent validation of their affinity and specificity, the encoded peptides or antibodies can be produced at large scale for diagnostics, imaging, therapy and/or research purposes.

The CARIM phage display platform now offers all facilities, including several highly diverse peptide (linear and cys-constrained hexa and dodecapeptides) and antibody libraries (naive and (semi) synthetic; V_HV_L, V_HH libraries) and knowhow to conduct phage display lead selection.

Figure Principle of phage display aided antibody design