Minimalist Antibodies and Mimetics: An Update and Recent Applications

The immune system utilizes antibodies to recognize foreign or disease‐relevant receptors, initiating an immune response to destroy unwelcomed guests. Because researchers can evolve antibodies to bind virtually any target, it is perhaps unsurprising that these reagents, and their small‐molecule conju...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology 2016-10, Vol.17 (20), p.1892-1899
Main Authors: Bruce, Virginia J., Ta, Angeline N., McNaughton, Brian R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
antibodies
Antibodies - chemistry
Antibodies - immunology
Escherichia coli
Fab fragments
Humans
Immunoglobulins
Immunotherapy
Medical research
monobodies
nanobodies
Protein Engineering
Research Personnel
Researchers
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Summary:The immune system utilizes antibodies to recognize foreign or disease‐relevant receptors, initiating an immune response to destroy unwelcomed guests. Because researchers can evolve antibodies to bind virtually any target, it is perhaps unsurprising that these reagents, and their small‐molecule conjugates, are used extensively in clinical and basic research environments. However, virtues of antibodies are countered by significant challenges. Foremost among these is the need for expression in mammalian cells (largely due to often necessary post‐translational modifications). In response to these challenges, researchers have developed an array of minimalist antibodies and mimetics, which are smaller, more stable, simpler to express in Escherichia coli, and amendable to laboratory evolution and protein engineering. Here we describe these scaffolds and discuss recent applications of minimalist antibodies and mimetics. Antibodies play increasingly prominent roles in basic research and clinical settings. However, their large size and need for expression in mammalian cells can complicate their laboratory evolution or engineering. Motivated by these challenges, researchers created minimalist antibodies and mimetics. These proteins, and recent applications, are described in this minireview.
ISSN:1439-4227
1439-7633
DOI:10.1002/cbic.201600303