Antibodies have been established as therapeutic molecules for the treatment of a wide variety of diseases. Antibodies, however, are complex molecules and very expensive to produce. Therefore, scaffold proteins have been developed in recent years as an alternative. The approach of our joint research project with the group of Roland Kontermann is based on designing and producing a new type of scaffold protein that offers a wide range of options for the incorporation of artificial binding sites and, at the same time, has therapeutically advantageous properties. The project is implemented through close, interdisciplinary cooperation, in which methods of computational protein design and biomedical engineering are combined. If successful, these new scaffold proteins offer great potential for the treatment of a wide variety of diseases, e.g. chronic inflammatory diseases, cardiovascular diseases and tumour diseases.
This research project is funded in the framework of the programme "Terra Incognita" by the University of Stuttgart.
Project Members
Fabian Klötzer
Bioinformatics