Computational and Experimental Evaluation of Linker Peptides and Thioredoxin Fusion Tag in CD20-rituximab Specific Interactions.

Background: Overexpression of CD20 protein on the surface of B cells in lymphoma can be targeted by several anti-CD20 molecules. The development of accessible interactive epitopes is more favorable than the full-length transmembrane CD20 in the affinity assessment of anti-CD20 monoclonal antibodies (mAbs).

Methods: The sequence of these epitopes was extracted, and the effects of different linker peptides and the location of histidine (His)-tag were computationally analyzed.