Antibody mimetics are organic compounds that, like antibodies, can specifically bind antigens, but that are not structurally related to antibodies. They are usually artificial peptides or proteins with a molar mass of about 3 to 20 kDa. (Antibodies are ~150 kDa.)
Common advantages over antibodies are better solubility, tissue penetration, stability towards heat and enzymes, and comparatively low production costs. Antibody mimetics are being developed as therapeutic and diagnostic agents.[1]
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^Johnson A, Song Q, Ko Ferrigno P, Bueno PR, Davis JJ (Aug 7, 2012). "Sensitive Affimer and antibody based impedimetric label-free assays for C-reactive protein". Anal. Chem. 84 (15): 6553–60. doi:10.1021/ac300835b. PMID22789061.
^Krehenbrink M, Chami M, Guilvout I, Alzari PM, Pécorari F, Pugsley AP (November 2008). "Artificial binding proteins (Affitins) as probes for conformational changes in secretin PulD". J. Mol. Biol. 383 (5): 1058–68. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2008.09.016. PMID18822295.
^Silverman J, Liu Q, Lu Q, et al. (December 2005). "Multivalent avimer proteins evolved by exon shuffling of a family of human receptor domains". Nat. Biotechnol. 23 (12): 1556–61. doi:10.1038/nbt1166. PMID16299519. S2CID84757398.
^Stumpp MT, Binz HK, Amstutz P (August 2008). "DARPins: a new generation of protein therapeutics". Drug Discov. Today. 13 (15–16): 695–701. doi:10.1016/j.drudis.2008.04.013. PMID18621567.
^Nixon AE, Wood CR (March 2006). "Engineered protein inhibitors of proteases". Curr Opin Drug Discov Dev. 9 (2): 261–8. PMID16566296.
^Koide A, Koide S (2007). "Monobodies: antibody mimics based on the scaffold of the fibronectin type III domain". Protein Engineering Protocols. Methods Mol. Biol. Vol. 352. pp. 95–109. doi:10.1385/1-59745-187-8:95. ISBN978-1-59745-187-1. PMID17041261.