[Exploring high affinity monoclonal antibodies for drug invention]

Antibodies can have a medicinal role because of their high specificity in molecular recognition. Although monoclonal antibodies specific for an antigen can be obtained relatively easily, it is difficult to acquire ones with high affinity. Recently, antibody engineering using an in vitro evolutionary process has been put to this task. However, little progress seems to have been made. Our previous study revealed that antibodies have low or high evolvability. An antibody with a poor ability to evolve would also not attain high affinity in in vitro maturation. In this review, we provide information for the improved design of the antigen-combining site and that this will contribute to the engineering of antibodies using an in vitro evolutionary process.