Fab construction of antibodies

by Nathan Wei, MD, FACP, FACR

Nathan Wei is a nationally known board-certified rheumatologist and author of the Second Opinion Arthritis Treatment Kit. It's available exclusively at this website... not available in stores.

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A new area of immunology research is called proteomics. This is a discipline that is aimed towards discovering biomarkers of disease. What are the genetic keys that might unlock the secrets to disease?

To give you an idea as to what types of science is involved, here is an abstract describing a new method of developing Fab antibodies. These antibodies are being used as pathfinder molecules to uncover new genetic markers.

(Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1991 May 15;88(10):4363-6.

Linkage of recognition and replication functions by assembling combinatorial antibody Fab libraries along phage surfaces.

Kang AS, Barbas CF, Janda KD, Benkovic SJ, Lerner RA.

We describe a method based on a phagemid vector with helper phage rescue for the construction and rapid analysis of combinatorial antibody Fab libraries.

This approach should allow the generation and selection of many monoclonal antibodies. Antibody genes are expressed in concert with phage morphogenesis, thereby allowing incorporation of functional Fab molecules along the surface of filamentous phage. The power of the method depends upon the linkage of recognition and replication functions and is not limited to antibody molecules.)

The pipeline of therapeutic antibodies has been growing steadily, building on successful clinical trials, particularly in cancer.

This growth will certainly accelerate, as genomic companies with many novel targets seek to employ antibodies to modulate these targets.

In addition, studies employing antibodies, or antibody mimics, are being ramped up as part of the explosive growth of proteomics.

All of these trends place a tremendous emphasis on the development of new approaches for faster antibody development, improved methods of selection and optimization, alternatives for production, and evaluation for novel applications.

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