Professor Hak-Sung Kim from the Department of Biological Sciences and Dongsup Kim from the Department of Bio and Brain Engineering announced on February 13 that they had developed a binding scaffold termed “Repebody,” which could replace immunoglobulin antibodies in the near future.

▲ Professor Hak-Sung Kim of the Department of Biological Sciences

Antibodies are applied in a wide range of biological fields, including medicine, diagnostics and biotechnology. Unfortunately, the ones currently in use are very expensive and cost 1 million Korean Won per 1mg, because they are manufactured through complicated processes such as animal cell culture. In addition, huge royalties have been paid to use these antibodies, which were patented in foreign countries.

The research team focused on repeat proteins, which are considered potential alternatives to immunoglobulin antibodies due to their unique structural and biophysical features. They developed repebody based on variable lymphocyte receptors (VLR), a kind of repeat protein present in jawless vertebrates such as hagfish and lamprey.

One of the key issues in developing an alternative antibody is the feasibility for mass production using the bacterial expression system. The research team’s approach, module engineering, achieved a high-level soluble expression, enabling simple mass production. It also allowed the target interaction surface of the repebody scaffold to be easily controlled by adding or deleting modules.

With its unique biophysical features, the repebody scaffold is expected to be used in generating molecular binders for therapeutic purposes as well as for applications in diagnostics such as protein chips, bio-imaging and immunoassays by rational design and library-based approaches. It already has proven itself to be a potential therapeutic for treatment of severe inflammation and sepsis. The research team will soon begin testing the repebody on animals.

Professor Kim said, “This ideal artificial antibody, with its many advantages, is a potential candidate for protein medicine that can replace the current ones. Developed scaffold and design technology will be applied not only in medicine, but also in many other areas.”

The results were published in the February 10 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS).

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