A distinct strategy to generate high-affinity peptide binders to receptor tyrosine kinases

We describe a novel and general way of generating high affinity peptide (HAP) binders to receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs), using a multi-step process comprising phage-display selection, identification of peptide pairs suitable for hetero-dimerization (non-competitive and synergistic) and chemical synthesis of heterodimers. Using this strategy, we generated HAPs with KDs below 1 nM for VEGF receptor-2 (VEGFR-2) and c-Met. VEGFR-2 HAPs bound significantly better (6- to 500-fold) than either of the individual peptides that were used for heterodimer synthesis. Most significantly, HAPs were much better (150- to 800-fold) competitors than monomers of the natural ligand (VEGF) in various competitive binding and functional assays. In addition, we also found the binding of HAPs to be less sensitive to serum than their component peptides. We believe that this method may be applied to any protein for generating high affinity peptide (HAP) binders.