Recombinant antibodies for antibody arrays

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): We propose to develop a rapid, low cost and high-throughput method for generating recombinant engineered antibodies with improved properties for proteomic and immunoassay applications. Engineered antibody constructs such as recombinant Fab fragments and chimeric antibodies will be generated and expressed by directly modifying the antibody genes in antibody-producing hybridoma cell lines, thereby eliminating the need for gene cloning and transfection. In this Phase I SBIR, we will demonstrate feasibility by modifying ten (10) hybridoma cell lines that produce antibodies used in MSD's commercial immunoassay kits. We will demonstrate that we can modify the cell lines so that they express their antibodies as recombinant Fabfragments or recombinant chimeras comprising Fab fragments linked to protein domains that enable site- specific labeling. The use of antibodies from established kits will make it straightforward to directly compare the assay performance of the new