DEVELOPMENT OF ALTERNATIVE AFFINITY CAPTURE REAGENTS FOR CANCE

With the advances in proteomics, thousands of cancer biomarker candidates have been discovered. To fully validate these candidate cancer markers and eventually translate them into clinical use, it is essential to establish a comprehensive, highly characterized and standardized collection of specific binding molecules directed against these cancer markers. AvantGen's technology platform for rapid isolation of recombinant antibodies against human antigens is well suited for this need. In this Phase I study, antibodies against 10 cancer biomarkers will be isolated from an antibody yeast display library and their affinity and specificity will be determined. The performances of the isolated antibodies will be comparable or better than those of commercially available monoclonal antibodies in terms of protein recognition, binding affinity, and detection in ELISA-based assays and Western blot analysis. In addition, the cost of isolation and production of these recombinant antibodies will be significantly lower than monoclonal antibodies. Once the feasibility of our approach in isolating and producing high affinity recombinant antibodies is demonstrated in Phase I, the process can be readily expanded for more cancer biomarkers. These affinity reagents will ultimately provide a valuable resource of reproducible, highly qualified/characterized alternative protein capture reagents for the cancer research community.