Development of recombinant scFv-antibodies against diphtheria toxin using phage display system

Phage display technology is an effective approach to the development of the next generation of immunodiagnostic reagents. Naive murine phage display a library of single-chain variable antibodies (scFv) was used to isolate scFv recognizing the diphtheria toxin, an important diagnostic antigen of diphtheria. The diphtheria toxin B subunit-binding clone with affinity constant of 1.13 x 10(7) M(-1) was selected. scFv preserved activity on storage in the course of 8 months.     

中国医学科学院北京协和医学院放射医学研究所天津市分子核医学重点实验室

血液肿瘤即造血系统的恶性肿瘤,是一种严重危害公共健康的疾病。目前,血液肿瘤诊断治疗的最理想方法就是分子特异性诊断和靶向治疗,但该方法面临的最大困难就是分子靶点的选择。噬菌体展示技术是近十年发展起来的一种新的生物学技术,具有高通量筛选、模拟天然表位、易于纯化、将蛋白功能与编码基因相统一等优点,广泛应用于功能性蛋白质和多肽的筛选、蛋白质间的识别与相互作用、抗原表位的鉴定、基因工程抗体的筛选等多个分子生物学领域,非常适于理想靶点的选择。目前,噬菌体文库技术在血液肿瘤诊治中的应用主要集中在噬菌体抗体文库和噬菌体随机肽库上。本文就噬菌体展示技术在血液肿瘤诊断治疗中的研究成果做一总结分析,并对该技术在这一领域的应用前景进行展望。     

Biotechnological applications of phage and cell display

In recent years, the use of surface-display vectors for displaying polypeptides on the surface of bacteriophage and bacteria, combined with in vitro selection technologies, has transformed the way in which we generate and manipulate ligands, such as enzymes, antibodies and peptides. Phage display is based on expressing recombinant proteins or peptides fused to a phage coat protein. Bacterial display is based on expressing recombinant proteins fused to sorting signals that direct their incorporation on the cell surface. In both systems, the genetic information encoding for the displayed molecule is physically linked to its product via the displaying particle. Using these two complementary technologies, we are now able to design repertoires of ligands from scratch and use the power of affinity selection to select those ligands having the desired (biological) properties from a large excess of irrelevant ones. With phage display, tailor-made proteins (fused peptides, antibodies, enzymes, DNA-binding proteins) may be synthesized and selected to acquire the desired catalytic properties or affinity of binding and specificity for in vitro and in vivo diagnosis, for immunotherapy of human disease or for biocatalysis. Bacterial surface display has found a range of applications in the expression of various antigenic determinants, heterologous enzymes, single-chain antibodies, and combinatorial peptide libraries. This review explains the basis of phage and bacterial surface display and discusses the contributions made by these two leading technologies to biotechnological applications. This review focuses mainly on three areas where phage and cell display have had the greatest impact, namely, antibody engineering, enzyme technology and vaccine development.     

噬菌体展示技术及其在肿瘤研究中的应用

噬菌体表面展示技术是一项特异性多肽或蛋白的筛选技术,它将随机序列的多肽或蛋白片段与噬菌体衣壳蛋白融合表达而呈现于病毒表面,被展示的多肽能保持相对独立的空间结构,使其能够与配体作用而达到模仿性筛选特异性分子表位,从而提供了高通量高效率的筛选系统。近年来噬菌体展示技术已广泛应用于肿瘤抗原抗体库的建立、单克隆抗体制备、多肽筛选、疫苗研制、肿瘤相关抗原筛选和抗原表位研究、药物设计、癌症检测和诊断、基因治疗及细胞信号转导研究等。就近年来噬菌体展示技术在肿瘤相关研究中的运用作以综述。     

人源天然ScFv噬菌体抗体库的构建及鉴定

噬菌体抗体库技术是获得治疗性抗体的一条重要途径。以20份健康人外周血为样本,通过提取淋巴细胞、逆转录－PCR（RT PCR）、抗体可变区基因的扩增、重叠PCR获得单链抗体（ScFv）基因,将ScFv克隆入噬粒载体,通过近300次的电转化获得了库容量为1.3×109的全人源天然ScFv噬菌体抗体库。通过随机挑克隆测序和用5种不同抗原筛选对抗体库进行了初步验证。随机测序表明抗体库具有较好的多样性,用5种不同抗原对其进行筛选,均获得了特异性噬菌体抗体的不同富集,表明成功构建了一个多样性良好的人源天然ScFv噬菌体抗体库。     

Drugs derived from phage display: From candidate identification to clinical practice

Phage display, one of today’s fundamental drug discovery technologies, allows identification of a broad range of biological drugs, including peptides, antibodies and other proteins, with the ability to tailor critical characteristics such as potency, specificity and cross-species binding. Further, unlike in vivo technologies, generating phage display-derived antibodies is not restricted by immunological tolerance. Although more than 20 phage display-derived antibody and peptides are currently in late-stage clinical trials or approved, there is little literature addressing the specific challenges and successes in the clinical development of phage-derived drugs. This review uses case studies, from candidate identification through clinical development, to illustrate the utility of phage display as a drug discovery tool, and offers a perspective for future developments of phage display technology.     

A human synthetic combinatorial library of arrayable single-chain antibodies based on shuffling in vivo formed CDRs into general framework regions

We describe a novel approach for high-throughput screening of recombinant antibodies, based on their immobilization on solid cellulose-based supports. We constructed a large human synthetic single-chain Fv antibody library where in vivo formed complementarity determining regions were shuffled combinatorially onto germline-derived human variable-region frameworks. The arraying of library-derived scFvs was facilitated by our unique display/expression system, where scFvs are expressed as fusion proteins with a cellulose-binding domain (CBD). Escherichia coli cells expressing library-derived scFv-CBDs are grown on a porous master filter on top of a second cellulose-based filter that captures the antibodies secreted by the bacteria. The cellulose filter is probed with labeled antigen allowing the identification of specific binders and the recovery of the original bacterial clones from the master filter. These filters may be simultaneously probed with a number of antigens allowing the isolation of a number of binding specificities and the validation of specificity of binders. We screened the library against a number of cancer-related peptides, proteins, and peptide-protein complexes and yielded antibody fragments exhibiting dissociation constants in the low nanomolar range. We expect our new antibody phage library to become a valuable source of antibodies to many different targets, and to play a vital role in facilitating high-throughput target discovery and validation in the area of functional cancer genomics.     

Development of Human Recombinant Antibodies Against ROR1 Tumor Antigen

Background:Receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 1 (ROR1) is an oncofetal antigen expressed on many types of cancer cells, but not normal adult cells. ROR1 antigen contributes to cancer development and progression by several signaling pathways. ROR1 expression has been associated with tumor growth, survival, and metastasis. In this study specific human recombinant antibodies were selected against ROR1 antigen for their use in cancer immunotherapy.Methods:Phage display technology was used to produce phage antibody from a human scFv library. Phage concentration was determined to confirm the phage rescue process. Panning procedure was performed to isolate specific scFv clones against ROR1 epitope. Phage ELISA was done to evaluate the reactivity of the selected scFvs.Results:Two specific human scFvs with frequencies of 20% and 25% were selected against ROR1 peptide. The antibodies showed specific reaction to the corresponding epitopes in phage ELISA.DiscussionCancer targeted therapy using human specific antibodies is a new strategy, which is used in cancer therapy. The selected specific scFvs that target ROR1 epitope are human antibodies that originated from a human library and have the potential to be used in clinic in cancer immunotherapy of ROR1 positive tumors without induction of human anti mouse antibody (HAMA) response.Key Words: ROR1, Phage display, scFV library, Cancer     

Phage antibody display libraries: a powerful antibody discovery platform for immunotherapy

Phage display technology (PDT), a combinatorial screening approach, provides a molecular diversity tool for creating libraries of peptides/proteins and discovery of new recombinant therapeutics. Expression of proteins such as monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) on the surface of filamentous phage can permit the selection of high affinity and specificity therapeutic mAbs against virtually any target antigen. Using a number of diverse selection platforms (e.g. solid phase, solution phase, whole cell and in vivo biopannings), phage antibody libraries (PALs) from the start point provides great potential for the isolation of functional mAb fragments with diagnostic and/or therapeutic purposes. Given the pivotal role of PDT in the discovery of novel therapeutic/diagnostic mAbs, in the current review, we provide an overview on PALs and discuss their impact in the advancement of engineered mAbs.     

抗乙型肝炎病毒表面抗原T7噬菌体抗体库的构建

构建T7噬菌体单链抗体(scFv)库筛选抗乙型肝炎病毒表面抗原抗体.从抗-HBs阳性患者外周血淋巴细胞中提取总RNA,反转录合成cDNA第1条链,PCR分别扩增抗体重链可变区基因(VH)和轻链可变区基因(VL),经重叠延伸拼接(SOE)PCR组成scFv基因,并将其与T7噬菌体载体的2个臂相连接.体外包装后,在宿主菌BLT5403中,扩增重组噬菌体抗体库.以乙型肝炎病毒表面抗原进行4轮“吸附-洗脱-扩增”的筛选,酶免疫实验检测抗体活性.所建抗体库库容为1.53×107,扩增后初级库滴度为2.42×1010pfu/mL.以乙型肝炎病毒表面抗原筛选后抗体出现特异性富集,经酶免疫实验鉴定,得到2株与HBsAg抗原特异结合的噬菌体抗体,成功构建了抗HBsAg蛋白T7噬菌体抗体库.     

Selection of functional human antibodies from retroviral display libraries

Antibody library technology represents a powerful tool for the discovery and design of antibodies with high affinity and specificity for their targets. To extend the technique to the expression and selection of antibody libraries in an eukaryotic environment, we provide here a proof of concept that retroviruses can be engineered for the display and selection of variable single-chain fragment (scFv) libraries. A retroviral library displaying the repertoire obtained after a single round of selection of a human synthetic scFv phage display library on laminin was generated. For selection, antigen-bound virus was efficiently recovered by an overlay with cells permissive for infection. This approach allowed more than 10³-fold enrichment of antigen binders in a single selection cycle. After three selection cycles, several scFvs were recovered showing similar laminin-binding activities but improved expression levels in mammalian cells as compared with a laminin-specific scFv selected by the conventional phage display approach. Thus, translational problems that occur when phage-selected antibodies have to be transferred onto mammalian expression systems to exert their therapeutic potential can be avoided by the use of retroviral display libraries.     

辅助噬菌体在噬菌体展示中的应用及研究进展

噬菌体展示技术是一种将外源肽或蛋白质与特定噬菌体衣壳蛋白相融合,展示于噬菌体表面来构建蛋白质或多肽文库,并从中筛选目的蛋白、多肽或抗体的基因工程高新技术。噬菌粒/辅助噬菌体系统是最常用的噬菌体展示系统,此系统中辅助噬菌体对噬菌粒的复制和组装发挥着至关重要的作用。本文结合当今该领域的最新研究动态,概述了噬菌粒和辅助噬菌体双基因组系统,着重介绍了不同辅助噬菌体的特点及其突变机制,并对其应用前景进行了展望,以期为该技术的进一步完善提供一定的借鉴作用。     

MAPPING OF HIV-1 GAG EPITOPES RECOGNIZED BY POLYCLONAL ANTIBODIES USING GENE-FRAGMENT PHAGE DISPLAY SYSTEM

Phage display has emerged as a powerful technique for mapping epitopes recognised by monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies. We have recently developed a simple gene-fragment phage display system and have shown its utility in mapping epitope recognised by a monoclonal antibody. In the present study, we have employed this system in mapping epitopes recognised by polyclonal antibodies raised against HIV-1 capsid protein, p24 which is derived from proteolytic cleavage of Gag polyprotein. HIV-1 gag DNA was fragmented by DNase I and the fragments (50–250 bp) were cloned into gene-fragment phage display vector to construct a library of phages displaying peptides. This phage library was used for affinity selection of phages displaying epitopes recognised by rabbit anti-p24 polyclonal antibodies. Selected phages contained sequences from two discrete regions of p24, demonstrating the presence of two antigenic regions.

The DNA sequences encoding these regions were also cloned and expressed as GST fusion proteins. The immunoreactivity of these epitopes as GST fusion proteins, or as phage-displayed peptides, was comparable in ELISA system using same anti-p24 polyclonal antibodies. The results indicate that the gene-fragment based phage display system can be used efficiently to identify epitopes recognised by polyclonal antibodies, and phage displayed epitopes can be directly employed in ELISA to detect antibodies.     

Mapping of hiv-1 Gag epitopes recognized by polyclonal antibodies using gene-fragment phage display system.

Phage display has emerged as a powerful technique for mapping epitopes recognised by monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies. We have recently developed a simple gene-fragment phage display system and have shown its utility in mapping epitope recognised by a monoclonal antibody. In the present study, we have employed this system in mapping epitopes recognised by polyclonal antibodies raised against HIV-1 capsid protein, p24 which is derived from proteolytic cleavage of Gag polyprotein. HIV-1 gag DNA was fragmented by DNase I and the fragments (50-250 bp) were cloned into gene-fragment phage display vector to construct a library of phages displaying peptides. This phage library was used for affinity selection of phages displaying epitopes recognised by rabbit anti-p24 polyclonal antibodies. Selected phages contained sequences from two discrete regions of p24, demonstrating the presence of two antigenic regions. The DNA sequences encoding these regions were also cloned and expressed as GST fusion proteins. The immunoreactivity of these epitopes as GST fusion proteins, or as phage-displayed peptides, was comparable in ELISA system using same anti-p24 polyclonal antibodies. The results indicate that the gene-fragment based phage display system can be used efficiently to identify epitopes recognised by polyclonal antibodies, and phage displayed epitopes can be directly employed in ELISA to detect antibodies.     

An improved helper phage system for efficient isolation of specific antibody molecules in phage display

Phage display technology has been applied in many fields of biological and medical sciences to study molecular interactions and especially in the generation of monoclonal antibodies of human origin. However, extremely low display level of antibody molecules on the surface of phage is an intrinsic problem of a phagemid-based display system resulting in low success rate of isolating specific binding molecules. We show here that display of single-chain antibody fragment (scFv) generated with pIGT3 phagemid can be increased dramatically by using a genetically modified Ex-phage. Ex-phage has a mutant pIII gene that produces a functional wild-type pIII in suppressing Escherichia coli strains but does not make any pIII in non-suppressing E.coli strains. Packaging phagemids encoding antibody-pIII fusion in F⁺ non-suppressing E.coli strains with Ex-phage enhanced the display level of antibody fragments on the surfaces of recombinant phage particles resulting in an increase of antigen-binding reactivity >100-fold compared to packaging with M13KO7 helper phage. Thus, the Ex-phage and pIGT3 phagemid vector provides a system for the efficient enrichment of specific binding antibodies from a phage display library and, thereby, increases the chance of obtaining more diverse antibodies specific for target antigens.     

A recombinant, fully human monoclonal antibody with antitumor activity constructed from phage-displayed antibody fragments

A single-chain Fv antibody fragment specific for the tumor-associated Ep-CAM molecule was isolated from a semisynthetic phage display library and converted into an intact, fully human IgG1 monoclonal antibody (huMab). The purified huMab had an affinity of 5 nM and effectively mediated tumor cell killing in in vitro and in vivo assays. These experiments show that nonimmunized phage antibody display libraries can be used to obtain high-affinity, functional, and clinically applicable huMabs directed against a tumor-associated antigen.     

Phage display: practicalities and prospects

Phage display is a molecular technique by which foreign proteins are expressed at the surface of phage particles. Such phage thereby become vehicles for expression that not only carry within them the nucleotide sequence encoding expressed proteins, but also have the capacity to replicate. Using phage display vast numbers of variant nucleotide sequences may be converted into populations of variant peptides and proteins which may be screened for desired properties. It is now some seventeen years since the first demonstration of the feasibility of this technology and the intervening years have seen an explosion in its applications. This review discusses the major uses of phage display including its use for elucidating protein interactions, molecular evolution and for the production of recombinant antibodies.     

Discovery of human antibodies against the C5aR target using phage display technology

Phage display technologies have been increasingly utilized for the generation of therapeutic, imaging and purification reagents for a number of biological targets. Using a variety of different approaches, we have developed antibodies with high specificity and affinity for various targets ranging from small peptides to large proteins, soluble or membrane-associated as well as to activated forms of enzymes. We have applied this approach to G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), often considered difficult targets for antibody therapeutics and targeting. Here we demonstrate the use of this technology for the identification of human antibodies targeting C5aR, the chemoattractant GPCR receptor for anaphylatoxin C5a. The N-terminal region (residues 1-31) of C5aR, one of the ligand binding sites, was synthesized, biotinylated and used as the target for selection. Three rounds of selection with our proprietary human Fab phage display library were performed. Screening of 768 isolates by phage ELISA identified 374 positive clones. Based on sequence alignment analysis, the positive clones were divided into 22 groups. Representative Fab clones from each group were reformatted into IgGs and tested for binding to C5aR-expressing cells, the differentiated U-937 cells. Flow cytometric analysis demonstrated that nine out of 16 reformatted IgGs bound to cells. Competition with a C5aR monoclonal antibody S5/1 which recognizes the same N-terminal region showed that S5/1 blocked the binding of positive cell binders to the peptide used for selections, indicating that the identified cell binding IgGs were specific to C5aR. These antibody binders represent viable candidates as therapeutic or imaging agents, illustrating that phage display technology provides a rapid means for developing antibodies to a difficult class of targets such as GPCRs.     

噬菌体短肽库的构建及其随机短肽的多样性

噬菌体短肽库是将随机合成的寡核苷酸序列通过与单链噬菌体外壳蛋白基因融合,从而将随机短肽表达于噬菌体的表面。将体外随机化学合成的寡聚核苷酸序列重组到单价噬菌体表达载体,构建了噬菌体短肽库,证明其库容为２×１０￣７集落形成单位（ｃｆｕ）,重组率为９３％。同时将１１个随机克隆进行序列测定,证实其寡聚核苷酸序列和氨基酸的分布几乎是完全随机的,其多样性可以满足特异性短肽筛选的要求。     

Specificity grafting of human antibody frameworks selected from a phage display library: generation of a highly stable humanized anti-CD22 single-chain Fv fragment

A prerequisite for the enrichment of antibodies screened from phage display libraries is their stable expression on a phage during multiple selection rounds. Thus, if stringent panning procedures are employed, selection is simultaneously driven by antigen affinity, stability and solubility. To take advantage of robust pre-selected scaffolds of such molecules, we grafted single-chain Fv (scFv) antibodies, previously isolated from a human phage display library after multiple rounds of in vitro panning on tumor cells, with the specificity of the clinically established murine monoclonal anti-CD22 antibody RFB4. We show that a panel of grafted scFvs retained the specificity of the murine monoclonal antibody, bound to the target antigen with high affinity (6.4-9.6 nM), and exhibited exceptional biophysical stability with retention of 89-93% of the initial binding activity after 6 days of incubation in human serum at 37 degrees C. Selection of stable human scaffolds with high sequence identity to both the human germline and the rodent frameworks required only a small number of murine residues to be retained within the human frameworks in order to maintain the structural integrity of the antigen binding site. We expect this approach may be applicable for the rapid generation of highly stable humanized antibodies with low immunogenic potential.