Background: Variable heavy chain (VH) family frameworks (FWRs) have been reported to affect antibody receptor and superantigen binding; however, such effects in IgE remain largely unknown. Given that VH family biases have been previously reported in IgE of certain allergies, there is a need to investigate this phenomenon for biotechnological and therapeutic purposes. Objective: We sought to investigate the effects of VH families on IgE interaction with FcεRIa, anti-IgE omalizumab, antigen, and superantigen protein A (spA) by using the pertuzumab and trastuzumab IgE models. Methods: Pertuzumab VH1-VH7 family variants of IgE with the same complementarity-determining regions were investigated with regard to their binding interactions to FcεRIa, Her2, omalizumab, and spA. Notable FcεRIa-IgE observations were cross-checked against appropriate trastuzumab IgE VH variants. Computational structural modeling and simulations were also performed for insight into the mechanism of interactions with various VH FWRs. Results: The pertuzumab VH5 IgE variant, but not the trastuzumab VH5 IgE, was found to interact with FcεRIa significantly longer than the respective VH family variants within each model antibody. No significant differences in interaction were found between IgE and omalizumab for the pertuzumab VH variants. Although trastuzumab VH3 interacted with spA, none of our pertuzumab VH variants, including VH3, associated with spA. Conclusion: We found unexpected varying allosteric communications caused by the VH family FWRs to the FcεRIa-, Her2-, and spA-binding regions of pertuzumab IgE, with implications for use of IgE/anti-IgE therapeutics to treat allergy and IgE therapeutics in allergo-oncology.
The reductionist approach is prevalent in biomedical science. However, increasing evidence now shows that biological systems cannot be simply considered as the sum of its parts. With experimental, technological, and computational advances, we can now do more than view parts in isolation, thus we propose that an increasing holistic view (where a protein is investigated as much as a whole as possible) is now timely. To further advocate this, we review and discuss several studies and applications involving allostery, where distant protein regions can cross-talk to influence functionality. Therefore, we believe that an increasing big picture approach holds great promise, particularly in the areas of antibody engineering and drug discovery in rational drug design.
The target of an antibody plays a significant role in the success of antibody-based therapeutics and diagnostics, and vaccine development. This importance is focused on the target binding site—epitope, where epitope selection as a part of design thinking beyond traditional antigen selection using whole cell or whole protein immunization can positively impact success. With purified recombinant protein production and peptide synthesis to display limited/selected epitopes, intrinsic factors that can affect the functioning of resulting antibodies can be more easily selected for. Many of these factors stem from the location of the epitope that can impact accessibility of the antibody to the epitope at a cellular or molecular level, direct inhibition of target antigen activity, conservation of function despite escape mutations, and even non-competitive inhibition sites. By incorporating novel computational methods for predicting antigen changes to model-informed drug discovery and development, superior vaccines and antibody-based therapeutics or diagnostics can be easily designed to mitigate failures. With detailed examples, this review highlights the new opportunities, factors and methods of predicting antigenic changes for consideration in sagacious epitope selection.
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