Caudia Dall'Armi, the head of Display Technology at IRBM, delivered this presentation on harnessing display technologies, specifically phage display, for the discovery of peptides and antibodies. Dall'Armi, with over 20 years of experience in academia and industry, highlighted the significance of phage display, a technology that has been around since the 1980s. She explained how this technology allows the creation of high diversity libraries by transforming the genome of a virus, which can then be amplified using bacteria.
Dall'Armi elaborated on the proprietary libraries at IRBM, including macrocycle peptide libraries and single chain libraries. She emphasised the ease of use and the potential of phage display to challenge targets with different strategies to achieve high affinity binders. She also discussed the versatility of phage display, which can be used with recombinant proteins, cells expressing targets, and even in vivo systems.
Dall'Armi provided insights into the process of biopanning, where libraries are challenged on targets, and phages that bind to the targets are amplified and reused for multiple rounds of selection. This process continues until a pool of high affinity binders is identified. She also mentioned the use of next-generation sequencing (NGS) and single clone screening to characterise phage clones with desired characteristics.
The presentation included a case study on the development of an antibody for a cytokine-like receptor, CRLF2, implicated in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Dall'Armi described the process of running a campaign against the recombinant protein and cells, optimising the sequences for binding, and verifying the affinity and internalisation of the antibodies. She highlighted the success of the antibody in promoting tumour regression in both in vitro and in vivo systems.
Dall'Armi’s presentation emphasised the potential of phage display technology in identifying therapeutic antibodies and peptides, and its application in developing effective treatments for diseases like acute lymphoblastic leukaemia.
