Construction of a Very Large Antibody Library

Tera Biotechnology Corporation proposes to develop a naive human antibody library containing at least ten billion unique combinations of antibody light and heavy chains in our proprietary phagemid display vector. The resulting combinatorial library will be assayed for specific antibodies. The diversity of the library will also be determined using the polyrnerase chain reaction and restriction enzyme analysis. The specific goal of the proposed Phase I effort will be to optimize the cloning protocols used to construct large libraries and to demonstrate our ability to analyze the diversity and screen these libraries. During Phase I of the project, screening protocols, analysis of library diversity, and immunoassay protocols would be developed to support these goals. The very large naive antibody library that we propose to create could be used in many laboratories to generate antibodies of any specificity without the need for immunization. Antibodies cloned from the very large naive antibody library could be used in a many defense and civilian medical applications. Due to the high interest in antibody-based therapeutics and diagnostics rapid commercialization of this technology is extremely likely