Screening

Nexigen’s technology platform includes screening engines for peptides and for protein-protein interactions. Both engines rely on novel selection mechanisms within living yeast cells. Since yeast cells are higher eukaryotic cells, like human cells, they provide similar cellular conditions and faster development cycles.

1. The novel mechanism for the identification of protein or peptide binders uses an effector in a eukaryotic cell, which is rendered non-functional by disruption (see Fig 1A). The corresponding cells are unable to grow and do not form colonies.
2. One effector part is fused to a protein of interest (“bait”, e.g. a drug target protein). The other effector part is fused to a peptide.
3. In case of an interaction between the bait protein and the peptide the effector is rendered functional and able to trigger a growth signal. As a result only those cells start to grow, which contain an interacting bait-peptide pair.

Using this technology Nexigen is able to efficiently select from millions of candidate peptides those, which bind to a given target protein. Relevant peptide binders can be identified, since the screening uses natural binding conditions in eukaryotic cells.