Session 8 : Molecular biology – II

Over the last ten years phage display has been employed for the potency optimisation of many antibodies which have progressed into clinical development. More recently, ribosome display has emerged as a powerful alternative to phage display for antibody optimisation. In this study we have analysed in-house data from the optimisation of 30 antibodies by phage and/or ribosome display to compare the efficacy of these display technologies. Data will be presented to show that both display technologies can improve potency over 10,000-fold and furthermore that ribosome display has the ability to search wider areas of sequence space for benefical mutations. The optimisation of an anti-IL13 antibody, which is now in pre-clinical development, will be covered in greater detail as an example of how the optimisation process can also yield useful information about the antigen binding site.