Results and discussion
Peptide aptamer design
Peptide aptamers are short peptide sequences presented and
conformationally constrained in a robust, inert protein
scaffold. They are selected in vivo from large libraries (as
many as 109 unique peptide sequences), yielding binders
with high and very specific affinities for selected targets
[17,18]. The three-dimensional conformational constraint
of the inserted peptide applied by the protein scaffold
greatly increases the affinity of the aptamer for the target
over that of an unconstrained peptide sequence [17-20].
They are distinguished from similar protein or peptidebased
strategies by being selected in eukaryotic cells for