ArticleScience advances2021
Cell-penetrating Alphabody protein scaffolds for intracellular drug targeting.
Article in Science advances, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 10 citations in OpenAlex.
- De Novo-Designed Bifunctional Proteins for Targeted Protein Degradation.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Article
- Grafted Coiled-Coil Peptides as Multivalent Scaffolds for Protein Recognition.ACS chemical biology · 2025Article
- De novo discovery of a molecular glue-like macrocyclic peptide that induces MCL1 homodimerization.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Understanding MCL1: from cellular function and regulation to pharmacological inhibition.The FEBS journal · 2022Review
- The positive regulatory loop of TCF4N/p65 promotes glioblastoma tumourigenesis and chemosensitivity.Clinical and translational medicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
20 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The therapeutic scope of antibody and nonantibody protein scaffolds is still prohibitively limited against intracellular drug targets. Here, we demonstrate that the Alphabody scaffold can be engineered into a cell-penetrating protein antagonist against induced myeloid leukemia cell differentiation protein MCL-1, an intracellular target in cancer, by grafting the critical B-cell lymphoma 2 homology 3 helix of MCL-1 onto the Alphabody and tagging the scaffold's termini with designed cell-penetration polypeptides. Introduction of an albumin-binding moiety extended the serum half-life of the engineered Alphabody to therapeutically relevant levels, and administration thereof in mouse tumor xenografts based on myeloma cell lines reduced tumor burden. Crystal structures of such a designed Alphabody in complex with MCL-1 and serum albumin provided the structural blueprint of the applied design principles. Collectively, we provide proof of concept for the use of Alphabodies against intracellular disease mediators, which, to date, have remained in the realm of small-molecule therapeutics.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.