Radioimmunotargeting with modified streptavidin-biotin. Final report

For the past three years, the author has designed and produced several useful streptavidin variants, characterized their properties both in vitro and in vivo, and developed methods and strategies needed for characterization of each molecule and the entire radioimmunotargeting approaches using these molecules. In molecular design of these streptavidin mutants, an enhanced molecular modeling method, including empirical free energy calculations was used which is of great assistance in designing streptavidin mutants effectively and intelligently. When the original proposal was submitted in 1992, the reviewers were rather skeptical about the proposal to design successfully a various streptavidin mutants, particularly a dimeric streptavidin and multi-flavor streptavidins. These were clearly very challenging tasks, but now the author has the molecules in hand. This demonstrates the power of the molecular modeling method he is using and suggests the feasibility of further enhancements of these and other streptavidin variants by the molecular modeling capability. The author has also developed signal amplification methods which could introduce large amounts of radioisotopes specifically at target tumor sites in the radioimmunotargeting approaches