Protein Engineering

Research lines

Vector Suite and Artificial Binding Proteins (ABP)
Our laboratory has developed a set of vectors that allow the evaluation of different promoters and proteins that enhance solubility, through an efficient cloning strategy. This vector suite was extended in order to generate a set of vectors to include the evaluation of expression of recombinant proteins in different cellular compartments and cellular hosts. This helps to overcome the limitations encountered when working with a single subcellular location and a single type of host. In addition, these vectors also allow the evaluation of alternative purification strategies for the improvement of the yields of the target protein.

In the context of cancer therapeutic tools, our group recently focused on the generation of artificial binding proteins known as Affitins. This class of proteins has a wide range of advantages compared to classical therapeutic antibodies that could be taken into account in the development of therapeutic approaches.
Compared to classical therapeutic antibodies, Affitins are able to maintain constant high affinity even when their molecular weight remains small. This could be very useful in lymphoid neoplasms, in order to gain access to solid tissues as secondary lymphoid organs, where leukemic cells receive survival signals that acquire favourable conditions of proliferation. In this line, a new generation of combinatorial protein engineering technologies has recently been created in our laboratory. The results have made it possible to propose the use of these artificial binding proteins as versatile selective glycosidase inhibitors and, potentially, as enzymatic inhibitors in general, which could be foreseen for future tumour therapy strategies (Correa et al., PlosOne, 2014).