Philipp Spycher, winner of a PSI Founder Fellowship. In his hands he is holding the molecular model of an antibody. (Photo: Paul Scherrer Institute/Mahir Dzambegovic)
With a new method for modifying antibodies, drugs are developped showing more stability and, thus, having fewer side-effects. At the time Spycher, a postdoctoral radiopharmaceutical researcher at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, was concerned with the question of how active agents could be bound to antibodies more efficiently. That's because, in combination with an antibody, the active agent can target the diseased cells in the body and, thus, can take effect in the right place. With the conventional method, the active agent is chemically attached to the antibody. This process creates a mixture of different compounds, each of which binds the active ingredient to the antibody at a different site. The mixture is difficult to analyse and can cause serious side-effects. Spycher hit on the idea of pursuing another approach in which, by means of enzymes, the active ingredient can be tacked onto the antibody directly at the optimal site, precisely and without great effort.
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