Recombinant Human Polyclonal Antibodies to Treat Disease

The publication by Sheila Keating, Rena Mizrahi and colleagues is a result of a large collaborative effort organized and coordinated by GigaGen, Inc., a US biotechnology company specializing in the discovery and development of recombinant biotherapeutic medicines. It describes a microfluidics and molecular genomics strategy for capturing diverse mammalian antibody repertoires to create recombinant multivalent antibodies.

This novel method generates mixtures of thousands of recombinant antibodies; mixtures that are enriched for antibodies with specificity and activity against predefined therapeutic targets. The antibodies are derived from convalescent or vaccinated human donors or from immunized mice.

Because the method produces cell lines in which multiple copies of the expression construct are present in the genome, insertion cannot be random. Steve’s team guided the use of CHO cell lines engineered with a Flp recombinase recognition target landing pad to achieve stable expression of recombinant heavy and light chains in polyclonal cell banks.

GigaGen reports that it has generated potent hyperimmune recombinant polyclonal antibody therapies against SARS-CoV-2, Zika virus and human thymocytes, the latter to treat graft-versus-host disease.

Click here to access the full publication.

For more information, contact Steven Chamow.