High-efficacy, high-manufacturability human VH domain antibody therapeutics from transgenic sources

Abstract

Interest in single-domain antibodies (sdAbs) stems from their unique structural/pronounced, hence therapeutically desirable, features. From the outset-as therapeutic modalities-human antibody heavy chain variable domains (VHs) attracted a particular attention compared with 'naturally-occurring' camelid and shark heavy-chain-only antibody variable domains (VHHs and VNARs, respectively) due to their perceived lack of immunogenicity. However, they have not quite lived up to their initial promise as the VH hits, primarily mined from synthetic VH phage display libraries, have too often been plagued with aggregation tendencies, low solubility and low affinity. Largely unexplored, synthetic camelized human VH display libraries appeared to have remediated the aggregation problem, but the low affinity of the VH hits still persisted, requiring undertaking additional, laborious affinity maturation steps to render VHs therapeutically feasible. A wholesome resolution has recently emerged with the development of non-canonical transgenic rodent antibody discovery platforms that appear to facilely and profusely generate high affinity, high solubility and aggregation-resistant human VHs.

Keywords: aggregation resistance; camelid VHH; human VH; single-domain antibody; transgenic heavy-chain-only antibody animal.