Selection of similar single domain antibodies from two immune VHH libraries obtained from two alpacas by using different selection methods.

Tengfei Li (1, 2, 3) , Matthias Vandesquille (4) , Sylvie Bay (4) , Marc Dhenain (5) , Benoît Delatour (3) , Pierre Lafaye (2)

1 UPD7 - Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7
2 Ingénierie des Anticorps (plate-forme) - Antibody Engineering (Platform)
3 ICM - Institut du Cerveau et de la Moëlle Epinière = Brain and Spine Institute
4 Chimie des Biomolécules - Chemistry of Biomolecules
5 LMN - Laboratoire des Maladies Neurodégénératives - UMR 9199

The two most used methods to select camelid single-domain antibody-fragments (VHHs) are: displaying their repertoires on the surface of filamentous bacteriophages (phage display) or linking them to ribosomes (ribosome display). In this study, we compared specific VHHs isolated from two different immune libraries coming from two different alpacas by using these two selection methods. Three anti-GFAP (glial fibrillary acidic protein) VHHs were derived from an immune library obtained by ribosome display after immunization of one alpaca with purified GFAP, a protein expressed by astroglial cells. In parallel, three other anti-GFAP VHHs were derived from an immune library by phage display after immunization of another alpaca with a human brain tissue extract containing GFAP. All the VHHs were closely related and one VHH was found to be strictly identical in both studies. This highlights the selection pressure exerted by the camelid immune system to shape the paratope of an antibody against a defined antigen.

Keywords: Anti GFAP VHH; Phage display; Ribosome display; VH; VHH

Domains: Immunology

Tengfei Li, Matthias Vandesquille, Sylvie Bay, Marc Dhenain, Benoît Delatour, et al.. Selection of similar single domain antibodies from two immune VHH libraries obtained from two alpacas by using different selection methods.. Immunology Letters, 2017, 188, pp.89-95. ⟨10.1016/j.imlet.2017.07.001⟩. ⟨pasteur-01580563⟩