Development of polyclonal heavy chain antibodies targeting programmed death ligand-1

Programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1, CD274 and B7-H1) has been described as a ligand for immune inhibitory receptor programmed death protein 1 (PD-1). With binding to PD-1 on activated T cells, PD-L1 can prevent T cell responses via motivating apoptosis. Consequently, it causes cancers immune evasion and helps the tumor growth; hence, PD-L1 is regarded as a therapeutic target for malignant cancers. The anti-PD-L1 monoclonal antibody targeting PD-1/PD-L1 immune checkpoint has attained remarkable outcomes in clinical application and has turned to one of the most prevalent anti-cancer drugs. The present study aimed to develop polyclonal heavy chain antibodies targeting PD-L1via Camelus dromedarius immunization. The extra-cellular domain of human PD-L1 (hPD-L1) protein was cloned, expressed, and purified. Afterwards, this recombinant protein was utilized as an antigen for camel immunization to acquire polyclonal camelid sera versus this protein. Our outcomes showed that hPD-L1 protein was effectively expressed in the prokaryotic system. The antibody-based techniques, such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, western blotting, and flow cytometry displayed that the hPD-L1 protein was detected by generated polyclonal antibody. Due to the advantages of multi-epitope-binding ability, our study exhibited that camelid antibody is effective to be applied significantly for detection of PD-L1 protein in essential antibody-based studies.