Modular peptide binders – development of a predictive technology as alternative for reagent antibodies

Current biomedical research and diagnostics critically depend on detection agents for specific recognition and quantification of protein molecules. Monoclonal antibodies have been used for this purpose over decades and facilitated numerous biological and biomedical investigations. Recently, however, it has become apparent that many commercial reagent antibodies lack specificity or do not recognize their target at all. Thus, synthetic alternatives are needed whose complex designs are facilitated by multidisciplinary approaches incorporating experimental protein engineering with computational modeling. Here, we review the status of such an engineering endeavor based on the modular armadillo repeat protein scaffold and discuss challenges in its implementation.