Antibody fragment expression and purification.

Interest in the potential of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to serve as therapeutic agents has surged in the past decade with a major emphasis on human viral diseases. There has been much attention in this area directed towards the human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1) and promising research developments have emerged on the inhibition of HIV-1 infection by mAbs and the identification of several highly conserved neutralizing epitopes. More recently, potent fully-human neutralizing mAbs have been developed against a variety of important human viral disease agents including the paramyxoviruses Hendra virus and Nipah virus, and human or humanized mAbs have been developed against severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS CoV), and West Nile virus, among others. Most of these more recently developed antiviral mAbs have come from the use of antibody phage-display technologies and the implementation of simplified, inexpensive yet efficient methods, for expressing and purifying the initially selected fragment antibodies is of prime importance in further facilitating this area of research.