FROM PEPTIDES TO DRUGS VIA PHAGE DISPLAY

In the past ten years, there has been a flurry of research generating and screening combinatorial peptide libraries, Molecular biologists ha ve favored phage display as a means of generating millions to billions of different peptides for the purposes of mapping protein-protein int eractions of antibodies, cell surface receptors and intracellular prot eins. This article summarizes recent work on identifying peptide ligan ds via phage display and several methods by which they serve to promot e drug discovery: design of peptidomimetics, biological validation of targets, and the establishment of high-throughput screens of chemical compound libraries. These methods provide powerful aids in the search for lead compounds of previously 'unscreenable' targets and for new ta rgets discovered in genomics efforts.