This week's seminar is being presented by Dr. Diana Fagan. She will present her work that employs the unique technology termed "phage display". The title of her talk is
"Using Phage Display for the Production of Sensors,
Drug Discovery, and the treatment of Disease"
Please join the discussion at Noon on Friday, October 2nd.
Background readings can be accessed via the following URLs:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1021215516430
Dr. Fagan presented her work on phage display use for the production of sensors, drug discovery, and the treatment of disease. Before phage display technology, monoclonal antibodies were used to purify molecules, identify pathogens and toxins, and treat infectious and autoimmune diseases. Monoclonal antibodies can have adverse effects such as induce an immune response. Due to this, phage display has become more popular in research. Phage display uses viruses to produce and discover proteins that aid in mechanisms of drug recovery and delivery, disease treatment, and production of diagnostic tests and sensors. In phase display, the target protein is stuck to a plate and exposed to a diverse phage library. Then the phage is washed to remove the phages that did not bind to the target protein and the remaining phages are eluted. These phages are sequenced to find the new peptide that interacts with the target protein.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: Phage display technology seems to be more promising than monoclonal antibody use. What are the advantages and disadvantages of phage display? Should phage display techniques be used more than monoclonal antibodies?
The advantages of phage display is the speed at which the variable regions are discovered and their ability to bind to the antigen is much faster. The disadvantage to phage display is that it is very expensive and has an extensive process.
DeleteIn comparison to monoclonal antibodies, the biggest difference is that monoclonal antibody production generates antibodies. These antibodies target antigens that are immunogenic while phage display technology identifies binders to antigens regardless of the immunogenic property of the antigen.
There are advantages to using monoclonal antibodies but there are disadvantages as well. As technology advances, new things are found to be a little more advantageous but not necessarily are they eliminated completely. Both phage display and monoclonal antibodies are very expensive to produce. But they’re used to detect different things. Monoclonal antibodies can be used for many purposes while phage display is normally used for toxicology and anti-venom research.
Phage display seems to be a much faster and more specific method compared to using monoclonal antibodies. The induction of immune responses, as seen in monoclonal antibodies, may not be necessary, as simply discovering virulent mechanisms through phage display can provide insight into proteins that bind to phages and how they interact to recover. The downside is that phage display is likely very expensive and requires an intricate setup. The payoff, however, is specific and fast identification of antigen-binding proteins.
DeleteSetting up a phage library can be expensive and time-consuming, but phage display will provide a quicker and more specific method compared to the use of monoclonal antibodies. Also, phage display will not induce an undesired immune response that is possible with monoclonal antibodies. The benefits of phage display seem to outweigh the negatives and it is a fantastic technique with a massive future in biology research.
ReplyDeleteOne important advantage of phage display is the speed that it identifies target-binding proteins. It is super quick because it does not have to screen each molecule one by one; therefore, more proteins can be screened in a shorter amount of time. Because of the quickness of phage display, research has been sped up that used to rely on more expensive and slow processes. Phage display is a great skill to have in microbiology labs.
ReplyDeleteMonoclonal antibodies are clones of other antibodies of identical immune cells. Since they are clones, these antibodies recruit the natural immune system to fight illnesses like cancer. This method is very popular in fighting cancer because of the many different roles it can be used.
Phage display technique is specific and less time-consuming compared to monoclonal antibodies. There are many complications in monoclonal antibodies production for instance contamination of the culture and that antibodies produced target antigens to induce undesired immune response like inflammation or even sepsis which can be fatal.
ReplyDeleteAlthough its expensive setting up a phage library, this method is better than monoclonal antibodies. With new inventions in biology research the phage display technique can be fine tuned to be more effective and efficient to fight diseases and autoimmune disorders.