Abstract
Antibodies are indispensable tools for research, diagnostics, and therapy. However, sometimes antibodies with the most favourable specificity profile lack sufficient affinity for a desired application. Here, we describe a method to increase the affinity of recombinant scFv antibody fragments based on random mutagenesis and phage display under stringent conditions. Random mutations are inserted by performing several rounds of error-prone PCR. After construction of a mutated antibody gene library, affinity selection is performed by panning with washing conditions optimized for off-rate-dependent selection. Alternatively, panning in solution with competition can be used to enrich binders with improved binding properties.
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Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the German Research Foundation (DFG, SFB 578) and the German ministry of education and research (BMBF, SMP “Antibody Factory” in the NGFN2 program).
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Thie, H., Voedisch, B., Dübel, S., Hust, M., Schirrmann, T. (2009). Affinity Maturation by Phage Display. In: Dimitrov, A. (eds) Therapeutic Antibodies. Methods in Molecular Biology™, vol 525. Humana Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-554-1_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-59745-554-1_16
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