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Targeting Astrogliosis: Isolation and Characterization of Astrocyte Specific Single Chain Antibody Fragments

abstract: Specificity and affinity towards a given ligand/epitope limit target-specific delivery. Companies can spend between $500 million to $2 billion attempting to discover a new drug or therapy; a significant portion of this expense funds high-throughput screening to find the most successful target-specific compound available. A more recent addition to discovering highly specific targets is the application of phage display utilizing single chain variable fragment antibodies (scFv). The aim of this research was to employ phage display to identify pathologies related to traumatic brain injury (TBI), particularly astrogliosis. A unique biopanning method against viable astrocyte cultures activated with TGF-β achieved this aim. Four scFv clones of interest showed varying relative affinities toward astrocytes. One of those four showed the ability to identify reactive astroctyes over basal astrocytes through max signal readings, while another showed a statistical significance in max signal reading toward basal astrocytes. Future studies will include further affinity characterization assays. This work contributes to the development of targeting therapeutics and diagnostics for TBI. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Bioengineering 2013

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:asu.edu/item:18807
Date January 2013
ContributorsMarsh, William (Author), Stabenfeldt, Sarah (Advisor), Caplan, Michael (Committee member), Sierks, Michael (Committee member), Arizona State University (Publisher)
Source SetsArizona State University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeMasters Thesis
Format49 pages
Rightshttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/, All Rights Reserved

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