[Development of diagnostically and therapeutically useful human antibody medicines by phage display system]

Phage display has been utilized for making recombinant antibody fragments (Fab or single chain Fv) of human, mouse, or other origins. After construction of an antibody combinatorial library, antigen-specific recombinant antibody fragments can be easily isolated by biopanning of the phage library displaying antibody fragment fused with viral coat protein III against antigen proteins, antigen-expressing live cells, or fixed cells. Using this technique, a variety of human recombinant antibody fragments can be retrieved from bone marrow cells, lymph node cells, or peripheral blood cells of patients with infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and cancer. To develop diagnostically and therapeutically useful human antibody medicines, we should first select recombinant antibody fragments not only with antigen-binding activity but also with bioactivity such as virus or toxin neutralization, or tumor-specific cytotoxicity. To achieve this goal, several steps in antibody phage display may be improved: 1) a larger library should be constructed for possible isolation of minor populations present in the repertoire; 2) the biopanning procedure should be improved for isolation of antibody fragments reactive with immunologically minor epitopes; 3) the screening procedure should be based on the measurement of the bioactivity as well as the antigen-binding activity; 4) if necessary, the affinity and specificity of selected antibody fragments should be improved. In this review, I discuss how to isolate clinically useful recombinant antibody fragments efficiently using a phage display system introducing our achievements.