Affimer screening facility

Synthetic library, replaces animal immunisation and allows screening of toxic and non-immunogenic targets in vitro. Affimers have been selected against more than 500 targets including toxins, SH2 domains, human sumo isoforms, ubiquitin linkages and small molecules

The in vitro screening of Affimer proteins including phage ELISA and sequencing of positive clones normally only takes 3-4 weeks

Around $800 million per year is estimated to be wasted on poorly validated antibodies with low specificity. The level of Affimer specificity and the technique used for Affimer isolation is ideal for isolating reagents with high specificity (see publications list).

Affimer proteins are stable with Tm up to 100°C and across a broad pH range. This offers major storage and shipping advantages.

Conventional antibody-based research reagents cannot be used for in vivo studies. Affimer proteins can be used to study intracellular protein-protein interactions and opens new research opportunities.

Affimer proteins crystallise readily enabling access to structural interaction information for design of small molecules for potential therapeutic applications.

Affimer proteins do not contain disulfides and can be easily manipulated for the generation of a) fusion proteins, bbi- and polymeric Affimer reagents, or c) labelling with biotin, proteins including enzymes or fluorophores.

Our industrial partner Avacta has shown that the Affimer scaffold has low immunogenicity using a peripheral blood mononuclear cell tes