The present project stems from the long-standing expertise of the Verona group on the development of macromolecular therapeutics and aims to capitalize on the respective and complementary expertise of the two involved groups. Indeed, the full development of the project is made possible by the collaboration with the INT group which has a wide expertise in engineering of recombinant antibodies of human origin.
We wish to identify novel markers of the prostate cancer possibly predictive of aggressiveness and androgen-independence of the tumor through the use of antibody libraries obtained from patients at different stages of the disease. Major aims are:
- Recombinant production of proteins preferentially expressed in prostate carcinoma (i.e. PSMA) and generation/characterization of in vitro cellular models representative of different status of the disease;
- Selection of antibody fragments recognizing PSMA and novel markers from new human libraries from PCA patients at different stages