Template-directed combinatorial surface assembly for protein-protein interaction mimetics

We propose to develop an approach that may easily provide potentially complementary surfaces with a given recognition interface by assembling chemical groups to a scaffold in a combinatorial manner. In that way, we here present the concept of template-directed combinatorial surface assembly. The principle of the approach, the synthesis of libraries and the methods used to characterize the mixture of peptides obtained are described. Preliminary recognition tests towards avidin showed that some of the mixtures displayed affinity. These first results can be considered as the proof of concept of our approach. (c) 2005 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.