Are affimer molecules in diagnostics and biotherapeutics the way forward?

[ThomasHartcup]

Can anybody kindly explain why affimer molecules could potentially have more clinical benefit than the use of traditional antibodies? And if so, how and in what specific applications would they be advantageous?

Thank you.

[Dagl1]

They are smaller than antibodies, are generally more stable and can function in a larger pH range than antibodies. They are produced by phage display and several rounds can be completed in 12 days. They can be used for in vivo staining and can have more specificity than regular antibodies. They are also suitable for super-resolution microscopy, where regular antibodies are generally too large. They are based on a scaffold protein that is synthetic/modified, so that it only contains cysteine residues where we want them to be, thus allowing for more specific use of tags such as fluorphores and biotin. The scaffold protein itself can have additional attractive properties such as inherent protease inhibitor activity (although I suppose that activity is reduced when introducing variable regions, I am not sure enough about the biochemistry).

I read https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4000234/ and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5487212/ if you are interested into the details. The wikipedia has some additional answers but I presume you have read this already. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affimer. 

Hope this helps a little.

 

 

[ThomasHartcup]

Thank you Atom- much appreciated. Read with interest. Yes, only read the wikipedia source.

Also, what do you then think would be the advantage of affimer technology for global health in terms in using it in the delivery of vaccines/ Co-vid 19 testing or medicines? 

Just trying to work out whether antibodies will be eventually displaced by affimers  in future medical applications as it seems to have clear biochemical benefits.

[Dagl1]

I am not very sure what the role of antibodies, or for that matter affimers, are in delivery of vaccines. I presume that affimers would work pretty well for Covid-19 testing. I don't know if antibodies will be completely replaced, but from what I have read (please note, I did not know about affimers before your post), they seem pretty promising in general, so maybe we will move away from antibodies. One thing is that most labs currently have large stocks of antibodies, and so even if everyone starts buying affimers now, we would still be using antibodies for a long time. 

But I did not evaluate the limitations, nor read deep enough into this to provide you with a real pro and cons analysis. 

Maybe other people on the forum know more or have better insights.