Induced pluripotent stem cell-derived hepatocyte-like cells could offer a personalizable human cell source for in vitro safety and efficacy studies

Affimer reagents and therapeutics are a class of non-antibody binding proteins that have been engineered for a wide range of applications where antibodies and aptamers have limitations. They are produced without the use of animals, can be used to detect difficult targets, can easily be formatted for a wide range of applications and can be easily and cost effectively manufactured. Using phage display, we have identified competitive binders to a range of targets, including the immune check point, Programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1). PD-L1 plays an important role in immune homeostasis and blockade of the PD-L1/ PD-1 pathway using antibodies has demonstrated impressive anti-tumour responses in cancer patients. Our inhibitors have been shown to be highly selective for PD-L1 with KD’s of single digit nM as determined by BIAcore. We have shown that the scaffold is amenable to being engineered to make multimers (dimers, trimers and tetramers) as well as being formatted to extend the serum half-life. 1000