Bispecific antiviral peptides
The aim of this project is to implement bispecificity into the design and generation of antiviral peptides that target separate, yet spatially proximate regions of viral proteins, i.e. the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, or the envelope protein gp120 of HIV-1. This will include bispecific peptides generated by fusion of a previously reported peptide that targets the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (Weißenborn et al., 2022), to peptides derived from other regions of the spike protein. Furthermore, using our established computational approach for the characterization of antibody-antigen complexes to generate high-affinity antibody mimetic peptides (Deubler et al., 2023), we will design bispecific peptides derived from the complementarity determining regions (CDRs) of antibodies. The project will involve chemical and bioanalytical, as well as computational strategies, and will be conducted in close collaboration with our virology partners (C5).
