The Human Antibody Core Facility is based on a technology that was developed at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. The technology facilitates the production of fully human, full-length, antigen-specific monoclonal antibodies. The process can be completed in as little as 28 days post infection or immunization and creates full-length, properly paired antibodies of any desired IgG subclass. As a core facility, we have produced human monoclonals for a variety of purposes including novel diagnostics, passive immunotherapeutics and most importantly, understanding human immune responses to vaccination. We currently have a library of over nine hundred monoclonal antibodies. Known specificities include seasonal and pandemic H1N1, H3N2 and B influenza strains, S. pneumoniae capsular polysaccharide, rabies and vaccinia virus, and anthrax protective antigen (PA). In particular, our antibodies to anthrax protective antigen (PA), derived from an individual vaccinated with Anthrax Vaccine Absorbed (AVA), were carefully characterized, and two antibodies which bound to complex conformational epitopes of PA were shown to be protective against lethal toxin challenge both in vitro and in vivo. Our core facility produced these anti-PA monoclonals with previous funding as a member of the Cooperative Centers for Human Immunology during the last six years.
We will provide this technology to the U19 projects for a variety of needs, including reagents to explore peptidoglycan (PGN)-triggered inflammation, and screening our current library of antibodies for antinucleosome specificities for experiments involving B. anthracis sepsis. This technology has been valuable during the last funding period and continues to be strongly applicable to the projects in the current proposal, as it will be instrumental in developing novel scientific tools that will facilitate the project goals.
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