Antibody Biomarker Discovery Via In Vitro Evolution of Peptides

: Antigen discovery and mapping strategies that enable the precise identification of serum antibody-binding epitopes in human diseases will be invaluable for translational diagnostics and therapeutic development. Protein and peptide library display screening techniques have shown utility for the discovery of antigens associated with disease onset and progression. Here, we describe a screening methodology using bacterial peptide library display to identify consensus families of disease-specific binding motifs to multiple pools of human serum antibodies. The sensitivity and specificity of identified disease-specific peptide motifs are then optimized using in vitro evolution techniques.