Identification of Protein Drug Leads That Address Challenges to Small Molecule Ce

描述（由申请人提供）：大分子已被证明是研究工具、人类治疗和诊断的重要价值。折叠的大分子的大小和复杂性可导致使用小分子不容易实现的作用效力和特异性。折叠大分子的独特功能使其非常适合于治疗和基础研究应用。人类健康相关抗体或其片段的理论功能多样性很大，因为抗体和抗体片段可以在体内针对理论上无限数量的疾病相关靶标产生， 包括使用小分子通常被视为“不可用药”的靶标。然而，抗体及其片段的产生、生产和纯化通常困难且昂贵。鉴定在体内结合治疗相关细胞靶标的非天然蛋白质的方法对生物医学界具有相当大的兴趣，因为它们可以显著增加具有治疗活性的蛋白质的数量，并且代表基于抗体的大分子治疗开发的替代策略。在这里，我们建议利用我们最近开发的分裂-超阳性GFP重组来鉴定对疾病中过表达的锚蛋白重复结构域蛋白具有亲和力的非天然蛋白质，并且这些蛋白质阻碍了基于小分子的药物发现。此外，我们将使用蛋白质进化和工程来鉴定对HIV复制至关重要的RNA发夹具有高亲和力和特异性的RNA结合蛋白。这些新的蛋白质试剂的治疗潜力将使用许多体外和基于细胞的测定来测量。总的来说，这项研究中揭示的发现将可能导致产生克服以小分子为中心的药物发现局限性的蛋白质，并可能为新的治疗策略指明方向。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Macromolecules have demonstrated great value as research tools, human therapeutics, and diagnostics. The size and complexity of folded macromolecules can result in potencies and specificities of action that are not easily achievable using small molecules. Features unique to folded macromolecules make them well suited for therapeutic and basic research applications. The theoretical functional diversity of human health-related antibodies, or their fragments, is large because antibodies and antibody fragments can be raised against a theoretically infinite number of disease-related targets in vivo, including targets that are typically viewed as "undruggable" using small molecules. However, the generation, production, and purification of antibodies and their fragments is often difficult and expensive. Methods to identify unnatural proteins that bind therapeutically relevant cellular targets in vivo are of considerable interest to the biomedical community because they may significantly increase the number of proteins with therapeutic activity, and represent an alternative strategy to antibody-based macromolecular therapeutic development. Here, we propose to exploit our recent development of split-superpositive GFP reassembly to identify unnatural proteins with affinity for ankyrin repeat domain proteins overexpressed in disease, and which frustrate small molecule-based drug discovery. In addition, we will use protein evolution and engineering to identify RNA binding proteins with high affinity and specificity for RNA hairpins critical to HIV replication. The therapeutic potential of these new protein reagents will be measured using a number of in vitro and cell-based assays. Taken together, the findings revealed in this research will potentially lead to the generation of proteins that overcome limitations to small molecule-centered drug discovery, and may point the way to new therapeutic strategies.