They must be somewhat novel in that the wet lab work verified up to 10x stronger binding as predicted. I agree it would be interesting to see how they compare to known binding proteins
we've been able to design tight binders for quite some time now- the issue with synthetic designs is that they tend to bind a little too tightly. You want to have a reasonable off-rate and the ligand protein should do more than just bind, it needs to effect some sort of response from the bound protein.
When you look at these synthetics they often maximize for interactions of hydrophobic areas on the surface.
