Structural correlates of an anticarcinoma antibody: identification of specificity-determining residues (SDRs) and development of a minimally immunogenic antibody variant by retention of SDRs only

Clinical utility of murine mAbs is limited because many elicit Abs to murine Ig constant and variable regions in patients. An Ab humanized by the current procedure of grafting all the complementarity determining regions (CDRs) of a murine Ab onto the human Ab frameworks is likely to be less immunogenic, except that its murine CDRs could still evoke an anti-variable region response. Previous studies with anticarcinoma mAb CC49 showed that light chain LCDR1 and LCDR2 of humanized CC49 could be replaced with the corresponding CDRs of a human Ab with minimal loss of Ag-binding activity. The studies reported in this paper were undertaken to dissect the CC49 Ag-binding site to identify 1) specificity determining residues (SDRs), the residues of the hypervariable region that are most critical in Ag-Ab interaction, and 2) those residues that contribute to the idiotopes that are potential targets of patients' immune responses. A panel of variants generated by genetic manipulation of the murine CC49 hypervariable regions were evaluated for their relative Ag-binding affinity and reactivity to sera from several patients who had been immunized with murine CC49. One variant, designated HuCC49V10, retained only the SDRs of CC49 and does not react with the anti-variable region Abs of the sera from the murine CC49-treated patients. These studies thus demonstrate that the genetic manipulation of Ab variable regions can be accomplished by grafting only the SDRs of a xenogeneic Ab onto human Ab frameworks. This approach may reduce the immunogenicity of Abs to a minimum.