EU Project: TARGETBINDER (expired)

In this EU-project 10 partners from 4 different countries worked together on a on a peptide discovery platform for high-throughput screenings.

Goal was to find peptide-binders for tumour antigens in order to find better therapeutics with a significant time and cost advantage compared to other biologics. Basic idea was to link two peptide-binders together that would activate one part of the immune system (e.g. CD5 or CD16 binders) and over-expressed proteins on tumour cells.

Thereby, two bispecific peptides would activate two independent arms of the immune system by targeting two over-expressed proteins.

Partners

KIT (coordinator), German Cancer Research Centre (Germany), Center for Advanced Bioanalysis (Austria), SME Isogenica (United Kingdom), Univ. Oxford (United Kingdom), SME PEPperPRINT (Heidelberg), SME Apogenix (Heidelberg), SME Biametrix (Tübingen), Technical Univ. Varna (Bulgaria), SME Mikrosistemi (Bulgaria)

At a Glance

FP7 reference: 278403
Duration: 01/2012 - 12/2014
Total Cost: 5.6 M€
EU Contribution: 4.0 M€

Highlights

As one of the highlights in this project, we advanced the multi-material nano3D printer. (more) During the project we realized that linear peptides give only good binders for protein domains that are specialized for peptide binding (e.g. SH₂ and SH₃ domains). However, we think that the basic approach of the TARGETBINDER project is still valid: We will re-address these scientific questions with the help of arrays with circularized peptides.