Phage and Ribosome Display for Antibody Discovery and Optimization

Dear Colleagues,

Therapeutic antibodies have become a major driving force for the biopharmaceutical industry; therefore, the discovery and development of safe and efficacious antibody leads have become competitive processes. Phage and ribosome display are ideal tools for the generation of such molecules and have already delivered an approved drug as well as a multitude of clinical candidates. Large libraries (up to 10¹⁵) can be rapidly constructed, antibodies selected, and sequence space extensively explored by targeted mutagenesis techniques or by random mutagenesis throughout the antibody sequence. Such approaches in ribosome display systems lead antibodies derived from phage display or from immunized animals have been improved more than 1000-fold in potency within the past 6 months. In addition, this approach (i) provides a rapid route for antibody humanization constraining the content of original mouse sequences in the final antibodies to the most hypervariable of the complementarity-determining regions (CDRs) using CDR grafting platform, (ii) generates several humanized versions with different sequences at the same time, (iii) results in affinities as high as or higher than the affinity of the original antibody, and (iv) retains the original antibody specificity and eliminates its immunogenicity in humans. It also allows screening for antibody expression, solubility, and stability for later therapeutic development.

This Special Issue of Antibodies will consider any submission associated with phage and ribosome display, whether it be its use for discovering novel antibodies, the development of new phage and ribosome display techniques, optimization, humanization and affinity maturation approaches, or its utilization in novel applications in diagnostics and therapeutics.

Prof. Dr. Adinarayana Kunamneni
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Antibodies is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• phage and ribosome display
• display technologies
• recombinant antibody formats
• combinatorial libraries
• biopanning
• selection
• lead characterization
• humanization and affinity maturation
• optimization
• physiochemical properties
• macromolecular mechanisms and interactions
• diagnostics
• therapeutics
• other applications