Peptides tested in vitro to block cancer-related receptor
2017
University Hospital of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland(1)
University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland(2)
University of Gdansk, Gdansk, Poland(2)
Antibody-based immune-checkpoint blockade therapy is a major breakthrough in oncology, leading to clinical benefits for cancer patients. Among the growing family of inhibitory receptors, the B and T lymphocyte attenuator (BTLA), is a promising target for immunotherapy. In the present study, the researchers used the previously published crystal structure of BTLA to design and analyze the capacity of several peptides to block the ligation between BTLA and its ligand. The researchers demonstrated in vitro that one of the designed peptides could block the interaction between BTLA and its ligand although the effect was partly due to an artefact originating from the presence of cysteine residues in the peptide. The study concludes that extreme care should be put when developing blockers to avoid misleading artifacts.
Design of short peptides to block BTLA/HVEM interactions for promoting anticancer T-cell responses
Laurent Derré(1), Sylwia Rodziewicz-Motowidło(2)
Added on: 09-18-2021
[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0179201[2] https://data.jrc.ec.europa.eu/dataset/352f7dfd-05cf-434b-a96a-7e270dc76573
