The major accomplishments for this year are summarized below. 1) Previously, we reported the isolation of henipavirus-neutralizing recombinant hmAbs including one, m102.4, which exhibited exceptionally potent and cross-reactive inhibitory activity against both HeV and NiV, and was administered to humans exposed to HeV. HeV is a recently emerged zoonotic paramyxovirus that can cause a severe and often fatal disease in horses and humans. HeV is categorized as a biosafety level 4 agent, which has made the development of animal models and testing of potential therapeutics and vaccines challenging. Animal studies with this antibody continue and more are planned with GMP produced m102.4. Large quantities of the antibody were produced in both Australia and USA for human clinical trials. 2) Combinatory antibody library display technologies have been invented and successfully implemented for the selection and engineering of therapeutic antibodies. Precise targeting of important epitopes on the protein of interest is essential for such isolated antibodies to serve as effective modulators of molecular interactions. We developed a strategy to efficiently isolate antibodies against a specific epitope on a target protein from a yeast display antibody library using dengue virus envelope protein domain III as a target. Two unique clones were identified and showed cross-reactive binding to envelope protein domain IIIs from different serotypes. Epitope mapping of one of the antibodies confirmed that its epitope overlapped with the neutralizing epitope. This novel approach has implications for many areas of research where the isolation of epitope-specific antibodies is desired, such as selecting antibodies against conserved epitope(s) of viral envelope proteins from a library containing high titer, high affinity non-neutralizing antibodies, and targeting unique epitopes on cancer-related proteins. 3) Identification of human neutralizing antibodies against influenza H7N9 was initiated and the first antibodies were tested, and their characterization and improvement continues.
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