Human combinatorial antibody libraries to hepatitis B surface antigen.

Zebedee, S L; Barbas, C F; Hom, Y L; Caothien, R H; Graff, R; DeGraw, J; Pyati, J; LaPolla, R et al. · Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A · 1992

other · Level V

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Abstract

Human antibody Fab fragments that bind to hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) were generated by using a recombinant phage surface-display expression system. Characterization of HBsAg-specific Fab fragments isolated from two vaccinated individuals reveals diversity in specificity of antigen binding and in the sequences of the complementarity-determining region. The sequence results show examples of human light-chain promiscuity that result in fine specificity changes and a strong relationship to a human germ-line gene. This application illustrates further that this technique is a powerful tool to isolate distinct human antibodies against immunogenic viral targets.

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