Elena K Davydova
Review Biochemistry (Mosc). 2022 Jan;87(Suppl 1):S146-S110
PMID: 35501993 PMCID: PMC8802281 DOI: 10.1134/S0006297922140127
Functional Protein Engineering became the hallmark of biomolecule manipulation in the new millennium, building on and surpassing the underlying structural DNA manipulation and recombination techniques developed and employed in the last decades of the 20th century. Because of their prominence in almost all biological processes, proteins represent extremely important targets for engineering enhanced or altered properties that can lead to improvements in healthcare, medicine, research, biotechnology, and industry. Synthetic protein structures and functions can now be designed on a computer and/or evolved using molecular display or directed evolution methods in the laboratory. This review will focus on the recent trends in protein engineering and the impact of this technology on recent progress in science, cancer- and immunotherapies, with an emphasis on the current achievements in basic protein research using synthetic antibody (sABs) produced by phage display pipeline in the Kossiakoff laboratory at the University of Chicago (KossLab). Finally, the engineering of the highly specific binding modules, such as variants of Streptococcal protein G with ultra-high orthogonal affinity for natural and engineered antibody scaffolds, and their possible applications as a plug-and-play platform for research and immunotherapy will be described.