Generation of Antibody Libraries for Phage Display: Human Fab Format

Abstract

Phage display is a powerful method for the de novo generation and affinity maturation of human monoclonal antibodies from naive, immune, and synthetic antibody repertoires. The pComb3 phagemid family of phage display vectors facilitates the selection of human monoclonal antibody libraries in the monovalent Fab format, which consists of human variable domains V_H and V_L (V_κ or V_λ), fused to the human constant domains C_H1 of IgG1 and C_L (C_κ or C_λ), respectively. Here, we describe the use of a pComb3 derivative, phagemid pC3C, for the generation of human Fab libraries with randomly combined human variable domains (V_H, V_κ, and V_λ) of high sequence diversity, starting from the preparation of mononuclear cells from blood and bone marrow. Depending on the complexity of the parental antibody repertoire, the protocol can be scaled for yielding a library size of 10⁸–10¹¹ independent human Fab clones. As such, it can be used, for instance, for the generation of a large naive human Fab library from healthy individuals or for the generation of a specialized immune human Fab library from individuals with an endogenous antibody response of interest.