The synthesis and screening of a combinatorial peptide library for affinity ligands for glycosylated haemoglobin.

This paper reports the synthesis and screening of a combinatorial peptide library for new affinity ligands for glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c), which is an important indicator of diabetes control. The new ligands are suitable for large-scale synthesis and overcome the disadvantages of antibodies (unstable and expensive to produce etc.), while remaining as efficient as antibodies in binding to the analyte. The library consisted of 262,144 hexapeptides synthesised using the one-bead-one-compound technique. The hexapeptides attached onto beads were screened with glycosylated haemoglobin HbA1c. The structures of the peptides exhibiting high affinity were characterised by Edman microsequencing. Computer modelling simulation of one of the lead sequences has shown that this class of ligand has a high affinity and specificity for glycosylated haemoglobin.