Patent ID: 7687457

Claim:
A method of preparing a proteinaceous molecule having a cyclic cystine knot backbone and with a defined biological activity, comprising: a) providing: i) an amino acid sequence of a peptide, wherein said peptide comprises a plurality of contiguous amino acids and has a defined biological activity, and wherein said peptide is about 2 to about 30 amino acid residues; and ii) an assay for detecting said defined biological activity; b) preparing a proteinaceous molecule having a cyclic cystine knot backbone by grafting the amino acid sequence of said peptide of step a) onto a cyclic cystine knot framework wherein said cyclic cystine knot backbone comprises the structure: wherein C 1 to C 6 are cysteine residues; wherein each of C 1 and C 4 , C 2 and C 5 , and C 3 and C 6 are connected by a disulfide bond to form a cystine knot; wherein each X represents an amino acid residue in a loop, wherein said amino acid residues may be the same or different; wherein d is about 1-2; wherein one or more of loops 1, 2, 3, 5 or 6 have an amino acid sequence comprising the sequence of said peptide of step a), wherein any loop comprising said sequence of said peptide of step a) comprises 2 to about 30 amino acids, and wherein for any of loops 1, 2, 3, 5, or 6 that do not contain said sequence of said peptide of step a), a, b, c, e, and f, may be the same or different, a may be any number from 3-10, and b, c, e, and f may be any number from 1 to 20; and c) exposing said proteinaceous molecule having a cyclic cystine knot backbone to said assay to identify a proteinaceous molecule having a cyclic cystine knot backbone and having said defined biological activity.