SECANT® Yeast Display Platform Technology

The SECANT® Yeast Display Platform is a fundamentally new type of protein engineering tool that is able to display complex, disulfide-bonded, multi-peptide proteins that are commonly used in present and next generation biologics.  The platform relies on the in vivo biotinylation of the protein to be displayed via a genetic fusion to a biotin acceptor peptide (AviTag™).  This biotinylated protein is then secreted into the extracellular environment where it is captured by cell-surface-localized avidin.  Once captured, the protein can be labeled with ligand, substrate, antibodies, etc. to serve as a selection criterion for flow cytometric or magnetic bead-based sorting.  Because the yeast display method relies on a fusion to a small peptide rather than a large, cell-wall protein, peptides requiring multi-domain assembly and complex folding (such as full-length IgG) can be displayed on the cell surface.  Furthermore, this unique method better mimics soluble production of the engineered protein meaning that selections for increased expression can also be performed.  The ability to engineer new biologics as for novel properties makes the SECANT® platform is a next-generation surface display tool for the engineering of next-generation biologics.




The SECANT® yeast display platform can display fully functional IgG on the surface of cells.  The heavy chain of the IgG is expressed with a C-terminal biotin acceptor peptide fusion that is anchored on the cell surface.  A mixture of cells that possess the IgG gene (positive) with cells that do not contain the IgG gene (negative) is shown in a flow cytometry dot plot below.  Flow cytometry allows independent quantification of antibody expression (x-axis) and ligand binding (y-axis). 

AviTag™ is a trademark of Avidity, LLC