Introduction to an Innovative Antibody Selection Method
It is reported in the Cell that researchers have developed a powerful innovative technique to find antibodies, especially therapeutic antibodies.
A few years ago, the researchers developed a basic method to select antibodies that not only bind to a given target, but also have a desired biological function. The researchers demonstrated the method by using it to find a potent antibody mimic, or “agonist,” of erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells. But the method is slow and limited for use.
Not this new fast selection method can finish two million test cells per hour. Using a sensitive “reporter system” in test cells that emits a fluorescent light signal once an antibody succeeds in activation a receptor or any other targeted signaling pathway. Then infect them with viral vectors with automation technology.
In order to testify the new method efficiency, researchers utilized it to discover a potent agonist of thrombopoietin (TPO), a hormone that is essential for the proper clotting of blood in wound healing. Since the mouse TPO receptor is almost identical to human TPO receptor, researchers was able to test his antibody agonist in mice. As a result, the antibody tripled platelet counts in mice over eight days—a much more potent effect than that reported for recombinant TPO. And the time from selection of the target through discovery of the antibody and completion of initial animal tests totaled only about five months. The result suggested that the TPO agonist showed much better in cell-culture tests, which needed fewer amounts to activate the TPO receptor on test cells than the TPO itself.
Researchers are now using the new method to find more useful antibodies for various applications. And the new method will have more academic and commercial purposes, such as pharmaceutical research, biological reagents and assays etc.
Article Link: Introduction to an Innovative Antibody Selection Method
