An Engineered Dimeric Fragment of Hepatocyte Growth Factor is a Potent C-MET Agonist

Overview

Journal FEBS Lett

Specialty Biochemistry

Date 2014 Dec 3

PMID 25451235

Citations 11

Authors

Cassie J Liu

Douglas S Jones 2nd

Ping-Chuan Tsai

Abhishek Venkataramana

Jennifer R Cochran

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), through activation of the c-MET receptor, mediates biological processes critical for tissue regeneration; however, its clinical application is limited by protein instability and poor recombinant expression. We previously engineered an HGF fragment (eNK1) that possesses increased stability and expression yield and developed a c-MET agonist by coupling eNK1 through an introduced cysteine residue. Here, we further characterize this eNK1 dimer and show it elicits significantly greater c-MET activation, cell migration, and proliferation than the eNK1 monomer. The efficacy of the eNK1 dimer was similar to HGF, suggesting its promise as a c-MET agonist.

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