Objective: To screen the peptides binding to hepatoma specifically.
Methods: Nude mice were inoculated with human tumor cells BEL-7402, then the Ph.D.-12 Phage Display Peptide Library was injected intravenously (tail vein) into mice. After 20 min the mice were sacrificed and the phage rescued from tumor tissues. All the tissues should be made an appraisal using immunohistochemistry and titering. The phage recovered from the tissues were amplified and purified then re-injected for next round screening. After screening for 3 rounds in vivo, the phage-peptides that homed to the tumor tissues or cells were obtained. Then these phage clones were sequenced to analyze the motif. All the sequenced clones were appraised by using cell ELISA and titering the distribution in vivo.
Results: Through the appraisal from vivo and vitro and peptides' sequences, several target motifs were preliminarily determined.
Conclusions: Some phage-peptides which could specifically bind tumor cells or tissues can be selected successfully from the random twelve-peptide library by means of phage display in vivo.