| Apoptosis is a fundamental process in the development and homeostasis of multicultural organisms. Deregulation of apoptosis, however, can result in disease pathogenesis. Examples are cancer; autoimmune disease, neurodegenerative disease and organ transplant dysfunction. The concept of apoptosis modulation allows for novel therapeutics. Our proposal exploits molecular evolution and computational techniques to design novel therapeutic protein/ peptides molecules that modulate apoptosis signalling pathways at the TNF receptor-receptor family interface. Agonists or antagonists that interact at this interface will be mutants of native proteins, such as TRAIL. Alternatively, minimised de novo binding proteins will contain receptor or receptor binding domains fused to, or incorporated onto a stable turmeric scaffold. We expect to develop a general strategy for rapid design and construction of algometric proteins/peptides therapeutics |