Immobilizing Strategies for Membranes to Screen Against Antibody Mimetics with Phage Display
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Immobilizing strategies for membranes to screen against antibody mimetics with phage display Vincent Ochejeni Agboh Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Biomedical Sciences The Astbury centre of structural molecular biology November 2015 1 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement © 2013 The University of Leeds and Vincent Agboh The right of Vincent Agboh to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 2 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Stephen A. Baldwin, who remains instrumental to this PhD despite his unfortunate passing on 13th November 2014. I would also like thank my supervisors Dr. Lars Jeuken and Dr. Stephen Muench for allowing me to work on this project, as well as their critical input, constant advice, guidance and support throughout. I am also thankful to Dr. Trevor Wilkinson, Dr. David Bannister, Dr. Stacey Chin and Dr. Benjamin Kemp, as well as all members of the biologics and protein sciences teams from MedImmune who trained me in phage display and the subsequent validation experiments. I am also grateful to MedImmune for providing funding. Special thanks to all past and present members of the Baldwin, Henderson and Jeuken groups from the University of Leeds. Particularly Mrs Jocelyn Baldwin, Dr Cheng Ma, Dr Vincent Postis and Zhenyu Hao who trained me in stopped flow, provided samples of VcCNT and NupC SMALPs, as well as AcrB nanodiscs. Thanks also to David Sharples who performed 30 L fermentations of several E.coli host strains. Also, thank you to Ivona Petrache, for training me in the production of nanodiscs. Thank you to Professor Tim Daffron, Dr Sarah Lee and Mrs. Rosemary Parslow from the University of Birmingham for providing the styrene maleic acid polymer and training me in its use. I would finally like to thank my family, Dr. Chris Agboh, Mrs Regina Agboh, Dr. Kelvin Agboh, Mrs Katie Agboh-Davison, Mr. Michael Agboh-Davison, Frankie Agboh-Davison and Ms. Pat Huffer for all of their encouragement and support. 3 Abstract Antibody mimetics are a novel class of potential therapeutic agents which improve on several limitations which hinder antibodies. As a result, they are the subject of increasing interest from both the pharmaceutical and academic sectors. They are commonly selected via phage display against an immobilised target. However the presentation of these targets, particularly in the case of membrane proteins, is often a rate limiting step in their production. In this study, several commonly-used protein tags were compared in their ability to immobilise a model membrane protein - MPSIL0294, a metal ion transporter from Enterococcus faecalis, a streptavidin binding peptide tag, an Avitag which has undergone in vivo biotinylation and a chemically biotinylated C-terminal cysteine. A fourth method of immobilisation was also included, aspecific chemical biotinylation of lysine residues in AcrB, a component of an E.coli multidrug efflux pump. The tags were compared using a phage display assay, in which designed ankyrin repeat proteins (DARPins) from a naïve library were screened against both model membrane proteins, which were both solubilised in n-Dodecyl-β-D-maltopyranoside (DDM). With the exception of the C-terminal cysteine variant of MPSIL0294, no DARPins capable of binding could be selected by any of the other immobilisation techniques after two rounds of phage display. Furthermore, the C-terminal cysteine MPSIL0294 also yielded poor success rates and only two binding DARPins were identified. Despite showing a moderately high level of sequence similarity, these two DARPins showed different binding activities during validation experiments. The alternative tags under test however; do not appear to be beneficial in the selection of antibody mimetics against immobilised membrane protein targets. Different methods of protein solubilisation were also compared in an identical manner: detergent solubilisation (in DDM), lipid nanodiscs and styrene maleic acid lipid particles (SMALP). These solubilisation methods were compared using a panel of membrane proteins composed of MPSIL0294, AcrB, NupC, an E.coli concentrative nucleoside transporter and VcCNT, NupCs homologue from Vibrio Cholerae. SMALPs of AcrB, VcCNT and NupC displayed the highest success rate for selecting DARPins capable of binding the respective targets. Subsequent validation tests showed that the best DARPins selected against AcrB SMALPs and nanodiscs behaved in a similar manner. SMALPs are relatively easy to produce, especially compared to nanodiscs so this study concludes that SMALPs are the best format for phage display. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgments ......................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... 4 List of figures ............................................................................................................................... 10 List of tables ................................................................................................................................ 13 Abbreviations .............................................................................................................................. 14 Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................................. 16 1.1 Membrane proteins in modern research.............................................................................. 17 1.2 Solubilising membrane proteins ........................................................................................... 18 1.2.1 Detergent solubilisation ................................................................................................. 18 1.2.2 Nanodiscs ....................................................................................................................... 20 1.2.3 Polymer solubilisation .................................................................................................... 21 1.2.3.1 Styrene-maleic acid ................................................................................................. 22 1.2.3.2 Amphipols ............................................................................................................... 23 1.3 The membrane protein panel under test ............................................................................. 25 1.3.1 MPSIL0294 ..................................................................................................................... 25 1.3.1.1 NRAMP .................................................................................................................... 27 1.3.2 AcrB ................................................................................................................................ 30 1.3.3 NupC and VcCNT ............................................................................................................ 32 1.4 In vitro selection strategies ................................................................................................... 34 1.4.1 Phage display ................................................................................................................. 34 1.4.2 Bacterial display ............................................................................................................. 36 1.4.3 Yeast display................................................................................................................... 37 1.4.4 Ribosome display ........................................................................................................... 38 1.4.5 mRNA display ................................................................................................................. 39 1.5 Antibody mimetics ................................................................................................................ 41 1.5.1 Single chain variable fragments ..................................................................................... 42 1.5.2 Nanobodies .................................................................................................................... 43 1.5.3 Designed ankyrin repeat proteins and antibody fragments .......................................... 44 1.5.4 Adhirons ......................................................................................................................... 46 1.6 Project Aim ............................................................................................................................ 48 Chapter 2: Materials and Methods ............................................................................................ 49 2.1 Materials and Suppliers ........................................................................................................ 50 2.2 Bacterial strains, Growth and Expression Media .................................................................. 50 5 2.2.1 Bacterial strain genotypes ............................................................................................