Construction of bifunctional phage for sensor construction to detect autoantibodies in sera of seronegative chronic arthritic patients

Abstract

One third of RA patients cannot be diagnosed with RA because they are seronegative for the conventional RA biomarkers (RF and ACPA). Also diagnosing RA at an early stage is difficult due to the low sensitivity of RF and ACPA biomarkers. Somers et al., 2011 came up with 14 RA biomarkers isolated via SAS from individuals who are seronegative for RF and ACPA and have had RA for less than a year. This project was aimed to use the biomarkers from this previous work in a novel methodology for label-free biosensing. Over the years, biosensors have become important for rapid diagnosis of diseases. Moreover, phage is being utilized as a biological recorgnition element in biosensing devices because of its ability to display peptides which can be used to identify targets recognizing the displayed peptide. Furthermore, phage are robust, thermally and chemically stable, easy to conjugate with biomolecules, cheap and can be immobilized on a transducer surface. We set out to develop 3 bifunctional