About VHH antibody
In the area of drug development, the commercialization of “antibody drugs” is being developed, but there are still many issues to be solved, such as high development and manufacturing costs and lack of productivity and long-term storage due to high molecular weight of antibodies.
One of the solutions to this problem is the use of VHH antibodies, which are ultra-low molecular weight versions of camelid-specific H chain antibodies.
Camelidae VHH antibodies have many advantage such as low development and production costs (antibodies that strongly bind to the target antigen can be quickly developed by the antibody library method), high productivity (Escherichia coli expression system can be used for VHH antibodies), highly stability (VHH can maintain antigen-binding ability even when exposed to100 ° C), so that the drug development utilizing the characteristics of this VHH antibody has attracted attention, in recent years.
Antibodies is used for not only the drug discovery, pharmaceuticals and diagnostics for testing, but also sensors for electrical appliance. Pharmaceuticals and diagnostics for testing are used not only for humans but also for the livestock and fisheries industries.
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| Comparison of antibody development methods | |||
| Antibody development method | Polyclonal antibody | Monoclonal antibody | |
| Hybridoma technology | High-stable VHH antibody development method | ||
| Period | 4-12 weeks | 16-24 weeks | 1-4 weeks |
| Required antigen amount | A few mg | A few mg | ≤0.1mg |
| Animal |
Requires animal immunization (Animal breeding facilities, expenses) |
Requires animal immunization (Animal breeding facilities, expenses) |
No animal immunization required |
| Method | Antibody purification from antiserum | Hybridoma technology | Molecular biological techniques |
| Production | Limited. It depends on the number of animals. | Infinite because of using infinitely proliferating cells | Infinite with molecular biological techniques using E. coli etc. |
| Stability | There is biological instability | Some are unstable to heat | High stability to heat, denaturing agents and pH |
| Variation |
Individual differences / lot differences |
Individual differences /No lot difference |
Individual differences /No lot difference |
Since antibodies have high specificity for target antigens, they are excellent as pharmaceuticals in that they have a low risk of side effects. Currently, in addition to the development of the antibody itself, the development of drug-conjugated antibodies and bispecific antibodies are being actively pursued.
However, antibodies have a molecular weight of 150,000 or more, and mammalian cells must be used for production, which tends to be expensive.
In addition, its stability is poor due to its large size, and its storage stability and thermal stability have become a major bottleneck in product development when incorporating antibodies into diagnostic reagents and industrial products.
Because of these backgrounds, it has been difficult to use antibodies outside of the medical field. However, if these issues can be solved, it will be possible to use the properties of antibodies that “specifically bind” as “sensor molecules” not only in the medical field but also in other fields.
The "highly stable camelid VHH antibody" that we deal with solves this problem and leads to innovation through technology push.
We have constructed a VHH phage library with an increased diversity (repertoire) based on the VHH gene of Camelid Alpaca by our unique strategy. From this library, VHH antibodies that bind to a variety of target antigens and bind with high affinity can be isolated in as little as 10 days without animal immunization.
