Strategies for selection and identification of rabbit single-chain Fv antibodies as ligand in affinity chromatography

We developed affinity chromatographic resins that immobilized rabbit single-chain Fv antibodies (scFvs). By biopanning using antigen-coupled multilamellar vesicles (Ag-MLVs), 152 types of original scFv clones that specifically bind to human IgG were isolated and identified. Apparent dissociation rate constants, _appk_off, of six different candidates were less than 10^-3 s^-1 and their dissociation constants, K_Ds, were ranged from 5.56 × 10^-10 to 4.04 × 10^-8 M. Consequently, the clones, R1-27, R2-18, and R3-26 were further investigated for use in affinity purification of human IgG. Both the clones, R1-27 and R3-26 maintained more than 40% of antigen-binding activities on the surface of affinity resins. Especially, R3-26 had a relatively high alkaline resistance. The direct separation of human IgG from 10% FBS-D-MEM by use of the column with R1-27 achieved 97.2% purity, while the column with R3-26 showed almost 100% recovery. The affinity resins at the densities between 4.32 and 15.19 mg-scFv/cm³ exhibited maximum binding amount of human IgG, while the highest ligand utilization was achieved by use of the resin at approximately 9 mg-scFv/cm³. The resin exhibited 7.69 mg/cm³ of equilibrium binding capacity (EBC) in affinity chromatography. It was expected that the EBC of affinity resins was strongly dependent on the specific surface area as well as the pore volume of the base resin. Therefore, the strategies to develop affinity ligands will be beneficial for development of on-demand affinity columns with higher affinity/selectivity, chemical resistance, while optimization of pore size and pore volume for scFv-coupled resins will further improve the EBC.