Engineering bivalency and bispecificity in protein therapeutics and protein scaffold development

Placeholder Show Content

Abstract/Contents

Abstract
Multivalent and multifunctional proteins are abundant in nature. The avidity effect, a core principle of multivalent molecules, allows these proteins to tune biological functions and responses across a large dynamic range with varying specificity. Many protein therapeutics also take advantage of this evolvable tunability, the canonical example being the antibody. This thesis consists of two separate sections. Section One: I focus on the avidity effect of multivalent proteins and its therapeutic uses. As an illustrative case, our lab had previously created a protein variant that monomerically binds the c-MET tyrosine kinase. By dimerizing this variant, we find that we greatly increase its efficacy through increased apparent affinity to cell surface c-MET. Section Two: I focus on multispecific proteins and their uses in medical applications. Most current therapeutic protein scaffolds are single protein domains with monomeric binding and function. Combining these scaffolds to create multispecific functionality presents manufacturing challenges. Here the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) protein is used as a stable, naturally bivalent scaffold for engineering bispecific proteins.

Description

Type of resource text
Form electronic; electronic resource; remote
Extent 1 online resource.
Publication date 2016
Issuance monographic
Language English

Creators/Contributors

Associated with Liu, Cassie J
Associated with Stanford University, Department of Chemical Engineering.
Primary advisor Cochran, Jennifer R
Primary advisor Dunn, Alexander Robert
Thesis advisor Cochran, Jennifer R
Thesis advisor Dunn, Alexander Robert
Thesis advisor Khosla, Chaitan, 1964-
Advisor Khosla, Chaitan, 1964-

Subjects

Genre Theses

Bibliographic information

Statement of responsibility Cassie J. Liu.
Note Submitted to the Department of Chemical Engineering.
Thesis Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2016.
Location electronic resource

Access conditions

Copyright
© 2016 by Cassie Jen-I Liu
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Also listed in

Loading usage metrics...