Patent ID: 7332298
Filing Date: 2008-02-19
Classification: A61K,C07K

Abstract:
1. An isolated nucleic acid sequence encoding a trimer strand of a soluble multimeric polypeptide of trimer units, wherein the nucleic acid comprises, in-reading frame: i) a first polynucleotide encoding a first polypeptide comprising the first about 100 to 250 N-terminus amino acid residues of a collectin family scaffold protein amino acid sequence, wherein the first polypeptide comprises a hub and a body region of the collectin family scaffold protein; and ii) a second polynucleotide encoding a second polypeptide comprising the last about 100 to 250 C-terminus amino acid residues of a tumor necrosis factor superfamily (TNFSF) ligand, wherein the second polypeptide comprises an extracellular domain (ECD) of the TNFSF ligand, and wherein the ultimate 3′-terminal residue of the first polynucleotide is operably linked to the ultimate 5′-terminal residue of the second polynucleotide via: a) deletion of the nucleotide sequences encoding a carbohydrate recognition domain (CRD) of the collectin family scaffold protein and b) replacement of the CRD polynucleotide sequences with polynucleotide sequences encoding the ECD of the TNFSF ligand, whereby, a single trimer strand spontaneously trimerizes with two additional trimer strands to form the trimer unit and the trimer unit binds at the hub to form the soluble multimeric polypeptide, which soluble multimeric polypeptide is at least a dimer of trimer units.