Simone Bischof

Selection of functional peptides with antiviral properties

Within the framework of this work functional peptides shall be detected that can destroy the human immunodeficiency virus-host interaction using molecular biological methods. Viruses such as HIV use certain surface structures of human cell receptors like the cytokine receptors CCR5 and CXCR4 to invade the cells and infect them.
These inhibitory peptides shall be located with the help of a focused peptide library and a ribosome display system.
For the library’s compilation, a selected mini protein shall be used as a scaffold in which targeted single amino acids shall be exchanged. Through these exchanges a sufficiently large amount of different scaffold molecules shall be generated, amongst which also the mini proteins with the desired bonding characteristics can be found.
The ribosome display serves the purpose of ensuring that the large amount of mini proteins in the individual ribosome-protein-mRNA complexes can present the immobilised target molecules (in our case the bonding-associated segments of CCR5 or CXCR4 receptors).
Using these processes, bonding sequences shall be found which shall block the HIV co-receptors, preferably specifically, and thus provide a possible approach for the development of antiviral medication.

1st supervisor: Prof. Dr. Peter Bayer
2nd supervisor: N.N.

Institute:
Department of Structural and Medicinal Biochemistry, Centre for Medical Biotechnology (ZMB), University of Duisburg-Essen

Telephone: +49 (0)201 – 183 - 2722
E-mail: simone.bischof@uni-due.de