Research group:
KTH SCHOOL OF CHEMISTRY BIOTECHNOLOGY AND HEALTH
DIVISION OF PROTEIN ENGINEERING
Principal Investigator (PI):
Present group members:
Dr. Johan Nilvebrant (Researcher)
Dr. Benedetta Maria Sala (PostDoc)
M. Sc. Kim Anh Giang (Research engineer)
Description:
The research group has a present focus on the use of combinatorial protein engineering principles to provide new tools for a variety of biotechnology applications, with an emphasis on affinity biotechnology. A core technology is an in-house developed platform for the generation of tailor-made affinity proteins, denoted affibodies. These are isolated by different powerful selection principles from large collections (libraries) constructed by combinatorial mutagenesis of a small and robust protein domain used as scaffold. Such "artificial antibodies" are at present explored for use in a variety of applications, incl. bioseparation, in vivo diagnostics (imaging) and therapy. The group is also exploring different means for construction and handling of large gene/protein libraries during selections, including phage display, ribosome display and protein fragment complementation assay (PCA).
