Alkaline phosphatase-fused repebody as a new format of immuno-reagent for an immunoassay

Abstract

Enzyme-linked immunoassays based on an antibody-antigen interaction are widely used in biological and medical sciences. However, the conjugation of an enzyme to antibodies needs an additional chemical process, usually resulting in randomly cross-linked molecules and a loss of the binding affinity and enzyme activity. Herein, we present the development of an alkaline phosphatase-fused repebody as a new format of immuno-reagent for immunoassays. A repebody specifically binding to human TNF-alpha (hTNF-alpha) was selected through a phage display, and its binding affinity was increased up to 49 nM using a modular engineering approach. A monomeric alkaline phosphatase (mAP), which was previously isolated from a metagenome library, was genetically fused to the repebody as a signal generator, and the resulting repebody-mAP fusion protein was used for direct and sandwich immunoassays of hTNF-alpha. We demonstrate the utility and potential of the repebody-mAP fusion protein as an immuno-reagent by showing the sensitivity of 216 pg mL(-1) for hTNF-alpha in a sandwich immunoassay. Furthermore, this repebody-mAP fusion protein enabled the detection of hTNF-alpha spiked in a serum-supplemented medium with high accuracy and reproducibility. It is thus expected that a mAP-fused repebody can be broadly used as an immuno-reagent in immunoassays. (CB.V) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.