Identification of ligands binding specifically to inflammatory intestinal mucosa using phage display.

1. Even though current treatments for inflammatory bowel disease are effective, adverse reactions remain a problem. With the intention of developing a new drug delivery system, we attempted to identify molecules that are selectively adsorbed to inflamed bowel. 2. The PhD-C7C phage display peptide library was used for biopanning against mouse isolated bowel, either untreated (control) or with inflammation caused by ischaemia-reperfusion injury. One hundred clones were selected from among those obtained by two biopanning procedures and the amino acid sequences of these clones were identified by determination of the base sequences. 3. Then, 20 clones were selected by an alignment process, after which the three clones with the highest affinity for inflammatory bowel were identified. One of these three clones had significantly higher affinity for inflammatory bowel than for normal bowel. 4. In conclusion, biopanning against isolated bowel samples identified an amino acid sequence (SQSHPRH) with a specific high affinity for inflammatory bowel.