High-throughput discovery of Protein catalyzed capture (PCC) agents as antibody alternatives for thermally stable biological assays

Abstract

There is a significant need for a rapid and streamlined method for the discovery and characterization of high performing, thermally stable biol. capture agents for immediate integration into fieldable detection platforms supporting applications such as real-time threat, health, and biometric monitoring. Peptide-based, protein catalyzed capture (PCC) agent technol. has been proven to produce such viable antibody alternatives with the added advantages of extreme thermal, chem., and biol. stabilities. However current development of new PCC agents requires a few months to complete. As a result, we have accelerated the discovery time of PCC agents to a couple of weeks through the creation of an original microchip-based assay platform, use of automated screening platforms, and establishment of computer modeling algorithms. The discovery method improvements have been exploited to develop novel capture agents on well-characterized immune system biomarker protein targets that are highly relevant for soldier performance monitoring.