{"doi":"10.17615/w6f9-he67","title":"Tribody: Robust Self-Assembled Trimeric Targeting Ligands with High Stability and Significantly Improved Target-Binding Strength","abstract":"The C-terminal coiled-coil region of mouse and human cartilage matrix protein (CMP) self-assembles into a parallel trimeric complex. Here, we report a general strategy for the development of highly stable trimeric targeting ligands (tribody), against epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and prostate-membrane specific antigen (PSMA) as examples, by fusing a specific target-binding moiety with a trimerization domain derived from CMP. The resulting fusion proteins can efficiently self-assemble into a well-defined parallel homotrimer with high stability. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) analysis of the trimeric targeting ligands demonstrated significantly enhanced target binding strength compared with the corresponding monomers. Cellular binding studies confirmed that the trimeric targeting ligands have superior binding strength towards their respective receptors. Significantly, EGFR-binding tribody was considerably accumulated in tumor in xenograft mice bearing EGFR positive tumors, indicating its effective cancer targeting feature under in vivo conditions. Our results demonstrate that CMP-based self-assembly of tribody can be a general strategy for the facile and robust generation of trivalent targeting ligands for a wide variety of in vitro and in vivo applications.","journal":"UNC Libraries","year":2020,"id":137445,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9594,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":380760,"name":"Rihe Liu","orcid":"0000-0003-0793-9064","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":597438,"name":"Dongwook Kim","orcid":"0000-0002-5687-7739","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":597439,"name":"C. Alexander Valencia","orcid":"0009-0005-0470-6339","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":598066,"name":"Kim, Sang Kyun","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:16:56.001887Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}