This is a proposal to establish a proof-of-principle for a vector system to isolate high-affinty antibodies through selective rounds in both yeast and Escherichia coli. Antibodies have quickly become extremely useful as therapeutic medicines to treat a wide-variety of disorders. We propose to develop a means of making the discovery of immunotherapeutics faster and cheaper. In this proposal we describe a system to isolate antigen-specific antibodies in yeast two-hybrid and then quickly evolve them for both higher affinity and specificity using phage display. This new vector system will eliminate the need for any subcloning needed for protein expression, Y2H and phage display. The option for expressing and purifying antibodies directly from E. coli or yeast is a direct application of the described system. The described system will allow for simultaneous testing of cDNA and antibody-antigen interactions in both yeast and E.coi-based systems. Completion of this project will form the basis of a scalable system for a rapid and inexpensive means of affinity-maturation of recombinant antibodies screened in Y2H and increasing our understanding of protein- protein interactions.
Researchers will benefit from an increased understanding of the function of human proteins. Methods are needed that can facilitate this understanding. The immediate objective of our research is to generate a method that will enable researchers to multiplex the screening of affinity reagents. We anticipate using our high-throughput pipeline for producing recombinant antibodies as a means to generate the reagents needed to make this method possible.
