Collagen, the most abundant protein in mammals, plays a crucial role in tissue development and regeneration, and its structural and metabolic abnormalities are associated with debilitating genetic diseases and numerous pathologic conditions. The ability to target collagens in diseased tissue could lead to new diagnostics and therapeutics, as well as applications in regenerative medicine. In this talk, I will present a new collagen targeting strategy that is based on triple helical hybridization between denatured collagen strands (of diseased tissues) and synthetic collagen mimetic peptide (CMP).This hybridization results in robust collagen specific binding in vivo which allows detection of degraded collagens present in normal tissues undergoing fast remodeling (e.g. bones and cartilage) and those in diseased tissues with persistent wound healing activity (e.g. tumor, fibrosis). I will describe various experiments designed to elucidate the mechanism of the hybridization as well as those verifying the CMP's collagen binding capacity both in vitro and in vivo. This is an entirely new way to target the microenvironment of malignant tissues and could lead to new opportunity for management of numerous pathologic conditions associated with high collagen degradation and remodeling activity.

Targeting collagen strands by triple helix hybridization

247th National Meeting (2014)

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