Screening and preliminary identification of liver cancer specific peptide from a phage display peptide library

Abstract

Objective To obtain short peptides which specifically binds to HepG2 cell line from 12 peptide libraries, and lay foundation for screening and identifying the new liver cancer markers for early diagnosis and treatment of liver cancer. Methods The liver cancer cell line HepG2 was used as the antigen and LO-2 as the absorber cells for subtraction biopanning from a phage display peptide library at 37℃. The positive phage clones were identified by cell enzyme-linked immunosorbentassay (EL1SA), and the identity of DNA sequence and amino acids were analyzed. Results After 3 rounds of screening, 30 phage clones were identified by EL1SA, ZS-9 of them bind to the HepG2 specifically. The amino acid sequence was blast in NCBI and Swiss-Prot, the results show that the sequence has not identity with the known genes and proteins in the database, and the sequence was not reported in literature. All these show that we had discovered several novel liver cancer associated antigen ligand. Conclusion Several candidate peptide binding to liver cancer specifically have been selected by phage display technology, providing the potential uses for early diagnosis of liver cancer or targeted therapy for liver cancer. Key words: Carcinoma hepatocellular; Phage library; Peptides; HepG2; Subtract biopanning