A new paper ‘Affimer proteins are versatile and renewable affinity reagents’ has been published in the journal eLife. The research explains how Affimer tools can be produced in a matter of weeks, rather than the many months it can take to create a high quality antibody.
The paper demonstrates that Affimer technology worked well in a wide range of different routine procedures in which antibodies are normally used by scientists.
It produced similar quality results and, in a new technique called super-resolution microscopy, its smaller size meant scientists were able to look more closely at what individual molecules were doing.
Dr Darren Tomlinson, from the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology and BioScreening Technology Group at the University of Leeds, said: “Molecules are notoriously difficult to study and therefore tools are required that allow molecule behaviour to be studied indirectly.
“Such tools, like Affimer technology, provide an easy and more reliable way to track molecules movements and study how they react to different stimuli, which will make the study of diseases they can cause much easier.”