Professor Sblattero  has been working on phage display and recombinant antibody technologies since 1994.

The scientific activity during the last few years could be summarized here below:

1) Selection of recombinant antibodies for diagnostic and therapeutic interest. Our group has developed a proprietary Phage antibody library display (Eu patent EP1131421). As part of collaborative projects the group has isolated potentially therapeutic recombinant antibodies directed against more than 60 different targets that include: bacterial toxins, fractions of human complement, human complement inhibitor proteins and, several cellular receptors. Three of these antibodies have been patented (US/EU). One of this antibody is now in preclinical development (http://www.adienne.com) after receiving orphan drug status from both FDA and EMA. Furthermore, the group has recently joined the project NIH U54 strategic initiative RFA-RM-10-018 aimed at developing an integrated platform to obtain high affinity antibodies to the human proteome. It is one of the 5 selected strategic NIH projects.

Scientific/commercial collaborations have been set up with the following companies: Eurospital spa (Italy); Diasorin spa (Italy); Quark Pharma (Israel); Tecna (Italy). Adienne Pharma (Italy), Aczom Pharma (Italy).

2) Autoimmunome characterization. Our group is specialized in the study of the molecular mechanisms responsible for the onset of autoimmune diseases in humans, with particular reference to celiac disease and type 1 diabetes. These studies have been addressed mainly by using the technology of the "phage display".  In particular, the technique has been applied to:

i) the characterization of antibody repertoires in its component genotypic and phenotypic analysis. This led to the first structural and functional characterization of autoimmune antibodies in celiac disease.

ii) Identification of antibody signature by construction of protein microarrays for research and diagnostics. In these studies, by using the technique of phage display (optimized by our group), we have select antigens of interest recognized by the antibody. Once selected these antigens are then validated on a large scale by means of the construction of high density protein array describing the so called autoimmunomes or antibody signature.

We have applied this technology both to infectious disease (cat scratch disease, Helicobacter pylori), autoimmune (Celiac Disease, SM, T1DM) as well as cancer (ovarian carcinoma).