Finding an interactive ligand-receptor pair is crucial to many applications, including the development of monoclonal antibodies. Biopanning, a commonly used technique for affinity screening, involves a series of washing steps and is lengthy and tedious. Here we present an approach termed continuous microfluidic assortment of interactive ligands, or CMAIL, for the screening and sorting of antigen-binding single-chain variable antibody fragments (scFv) displayed on bacteriophages (phages). Phages carrying native negative charges on their coat proteins were electrophoresed through a hydrogel matrix functionalized with target antigens under two alternating orthogonal electric fields. During the weak horizontal electric field phase, phages were differentially swept laterally depending on their affinity for the antigen, and all phages were electrophoresed down to be collected during the strong vertical electric field phase. Phages of different affinity were spatially separated, allowing the continuous operation. More than 105 CFU (colony forming unit) antigen-interacting phages were isolated with ~100% specificity from a phage library containing 3 × 109 individual members within 40 minutes of sorting using CMAIL. CMAIL is rapid, sensitive, specific, and does not employ washing, elution or magnetic beads. In conclusion, we have developed an efficient and cost-effective method for isolating and sorting affinity reagents involving phage display.

Vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) is an important stimulator for angiogenesis in solid tumors. Blocking VEGF activity is an effective therapeutic strategy to inhibit tumor growth and metastasis. Avastin, a humanized monoclonal antibody recognizes VEGF, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. To generate potential VEGF-recognizing antibodies with better tumor regression ability than that of Avastin, we have designed a systematic antibody selection plan. From mice immunized with recombinant human VEGF, we generated three phage display libraries, scFv-M13KO7, Fab-M13KO7, and scFv-Hyperphage, in single-chain Fv (scFv) or Fab format, displayed using either M13KO7 helper phage or Hyperphage. Solid-phase and solution-phase selection strategies were then applied to each library, generating six panning combinations. A total of sixty-four antibodies recognizing VEGF were obtained. Based on the results of epitope mapping, binding affinity, and biological functions in tumor inhibition, eight antibodies were chosen to examine their abilities in tumor regression in a mouse xenograft model using human COLO 205 cancer cells. Three of them showed improvement in the inhibition of tumor growth (328%–347% tumor growth ratio (% of Day 0 tumor volume) on Day 21 vs. 435% with Avastin). This finding suggests a potential use of these three antibodies for VEGF-targeted therapy.

BackgroundMonoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and their derivatives are the fastest expanding category of pharmaceuticals. Efficient screening and generation of appropriate therapeutic human antibodies are important and urgent issues in the field of medicine. The successful in vitro biopanning method for antibody screening largely depends on the highly diverse, reliable and humanized CDR library. To rapidly obtain potent human antibodies, we designed and constructed a highly diverse synthetic human single-chain variable fragment (scFv) antibody library greater than a giga in size by phage display. Herein, the novel TIM-3-neutralizing antibodies with immunomodulatory functions derived from this library serve as an example to demonstrate the library’s potential for biomedical applications.MethodsThe library was designed with high stability scaffolds and six complementarity determining regions (CDRs) tailored to mimic human composition. The engineered antibody sequences were optimized for codon usage and subjected to synthesis. The six CDRs with variable length CDR-H3s were individually subjected to β-lactamase selection and then recombined for library construction. Five therapeutic target antigens were used for human antibody generation via phage library biopanning. TIM-3 antibody activity was verified by immunoactivity assays.ResultsWe have designed and constructed a highly diverse synthetic human scFv library named DSyn-1 (DCB Synthetic-1) containing 2.5 × 1010 phage clones. Three selected TIM-3-recognizing antibodies DCBT3-4, DCBT3-19, and DCBT3-22 showed significant inhibition activity by TIM-3 reporter assays at nanomolar ranges and binding affinities in sub-nanomolar ranges. Furthermore, clone DCBT3-22 was exceptionally superior with good physicochemical property and a purity of more than 98% without aggregation.ConclusionThe promising results illustrate not only the potential of the DSyn-1 library for biomedical research applications, but also the therapeutic potential of the three novel fully human TIM-3-neutralizing antibodies.