Our bodies use antibodies to fight off viruses and diseases, but it takes time for our system to build up enough to ward off potential attacks. Researchers at Berkley Lab have a newly designed system that may effectively speed up scientists ability to discover new artificial antibodies.
The teams’ study, published in ACS Nano, was a collaborative effort with UC San Francisco, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and New York University.
New Atlas reported on the studies and explained antibodies and how they work:
Antibodies are proteins that have specialized tips that latch onto certain molecules in pathogens. When they do, they either flag the invader for destruction by other immune cells or neutralize the pathogen directly by inhibiting a vital function. Each antibody is focused on one particular pathogen, and your body is teeming with different types of them, targeting all sorts of invaders.
Scientists often harvest antibodies from people after they have fought off certain illnesses because they are highly effective. They have also successfully engineered antibodies from scratch, however, both of these methods are expensive and quite difficult.
This has led the team to focus on artificial antibodies and other nanoparticles as an effective, cost-efficient way to fight off viruses. The newly designed system begins with a nanosheet comprised of molecules called peptoids.
The sheet is coated in loops of other peptoids that the team termed “loopoids.” The nanosheet is the supporting structure and the loopoids remain active and latch onto molecules that may be present in other pathogens.
Each one of these loopoids can be adjusted to form different shapes, and be tested to see if they can easily attract the pathogen molecules. The researchers can determine which ones stick by exposing the system to a variety of molecules. If they stick, then that loopoid gives the scientists a good starting point for developing artificial antibodies for that pathogen.
Ron Zuckermann co-authored the study, in explaining what this means for artificial antibody discoveries:
We can now readily build populations of rugged synthetic materials that can be engineered to recognize a potential pathogen. It is a shining example of biomimetic nanoscience.
The system’s high efficiency is largely based off of the large number of loopoids present on each nanosheet, increasing the likelihood of finding antibody candidates. One example the team provided is in how they successfully identified a loopoid that disrupts and binds to the anthrax pathogen.
To deal with the complexity of screening large libraries of “folded nanostructures,” the team worked hard to automate as much of the screening and synthesis process as possible.
“This work was the result of a huge effort from a number of institutions and represents a milestone for the field,” said Zuckermann.
As reported by Laurie Chong, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
Optimization of the synthesis, assembly, and screening processes provides a scaleable strategy for generating and screening large chemical libraries of 2-D nanomaterials that can exhibit potent and selective binding to target proteins.
This can have major implications for scientists in reducing the amount of time it takes to find treatments for many different illnesses, and biomedical applications like diagnostics, sensing, and therapeutics. They say the system is both stable and inexpensive compared to current methods.
