Antibody mimetics: the next generation antibody engineering, a retrospective and prospective analysis

Antibody mimetics is a novel antibody engineering approach after the development of polyclonal, monoclonal antibodies, and genetically engineered antibody fragments. Inspired by the structure and function of natural antibodies, antibody mimetics offer many advantages over conventional antibodies and can be constructed by protein-directed evolution, peptide design and synthesis, or fusion of complementarity-determining regions through intervening framework regions. A series of parent protein/peptide structures and technical roadmaps have been established to induce better recognising properties, superior affinity, stability, penetrability, and cost-effectiveness of the designed mimetics. This article aims to summarise the evolution of antibody mimetics engineering, illustrate the highlights and hotpots in this research field using scientometric analysis, and give an anticipatory analysis on this increasing research topic.