Introduction to Antibody Engineering and Phage Display

Abstract

The vertebrate immune system, capable of rapidly producing highly specific antibodies upon immunisation, has been used to produce murine monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) via immortalisation and isolation of antibody–secreting cells. These mAbs have had a profound impact in the fields of diagnostics and therapeutics. However, the therapeutic use of murine mAbs is complicated by their immunogenicity. To circumvent this immunogenicity, antibody engineering techniques which render murine mAbs more compatible with the human immune system have been devised. Over the last decade, the technique of antibody phage display, which facilitates the production of human mAbs, has been developed. This review serves as an introduction to antibody engineering, phage display and the development of antibody fragments into viable diagnostic and therapeutic reagents.

An Efficient Method for Isolating Antibody Fragments Against Small Peptides by Antibody Phage Display

“…Functional scFv expressed from a single cDNA sequence can be produced efficiently in bacteria without the need to immunize animals [12]. Since the pioneering work of Smith [13] and development by Mccafferty et al [14], the expression of scFvs on the surface of phage and panning of these phage libraries against target antigen has matured into an extensively used technique to produce recombinant antibodies for research purposes and for the development of therapeutics [15,16]. The production and selection of scFvs *Address correspondence to this author at the Department of Food Science, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, 1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark; Tel: +45 35333286; Fax: +45 35333214; E-mail: hsi@life.ku.dk on phage surface is much faster compared to conventional hybridoma technique.…”

Preparation of single chain variable fragment of MG7mAb by phage display technology

“…MG 7 antibody was confirmed to be of great value and good potency in the targeting gene therapy of gastric cancer due to the overexpression of its corresponding antigen in a large proportion of patients with gastric cancer. But owing to its murine origin, like many other similar antibodies, MG7 antibody can elicit human anti-mouse immunoreaction and thus its use in clinical practice is restricted [2,3] . One of the efficient solutions to this problem is to remove the constant region of antibody which makes main contribution to the immunogenicity of the murine antibody to human being.…”