Semi-automated Magnetic Bead-Based Antibody Selection from Phage Display Libraries

Antibodies are the fastest growing sector of biological therapeutics, and currently more than 400 monoclonal antibodies are in the pipeline (Dübel 2007). The quest to obtain human antibodies for therapy has led many researchers to design diverse display technologies as well as to generate larger and more diverse antibody display libraries (Mondon et al. 2008). Although many different display technologies have been introduced for human antibody generation, such as yeast display (Boder and Wittrup 1997), ribosome display (Hanes and Plückthun 1997) and mRNA display (Fukuda et al. 2006), phage display still remains the gold standard in human antibody generation (McCafferty et al. 1990; Barbas et al. 1991; Breitling et al. 1991). The accomplishment of phage display-derived human antibodies is highlighted by the increase of human antibody-based therapies being introduced into the market, and many more in clinical trials (Thie et al. 2008). Today, multiple companies exploit phage display technology worldwide for the development of therapeutic antibodies (Konthur 2007). Additionally, phage display of antibody libraries is being increasingly appreciated for the development of research reagents and a number of national and international initiatives already apply this method for antibody generation (Konthur et al. 2005; Taussig et al. 2007).