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Development of humanized scFv antibody fragment(s) that targets and blocks specific HLA alleles linked to myasthenia gravis

Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology volume 101, pages 8165–8179 (2017)Cite this article

Abstract

Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease caused by sensitization of the immune system to self-antigens. We have previously shown that targeting MG-susceptible alleles can significantly inhibit proliferation of disease-specific T cells. In this work, we humanized a murine monoclonal antibody (mAb) LG11, capable of blocking MG-associated DQ beta 1 (DQB1) allele and reformatted it into single-chain fragment variable (scFv). A fully functional humanized scFv was obtained by optimizing variable domain orientations and linker lengths, along with the optimization of expression conditions and codons to suit Escherichia coli expression machinery. Characterization of humanized scFv (FL8) revealed that the reformatted scFv, despite recognizing the same epitope as the parent murine LG11 mAb, exhibited superior binding affinity (0.97 nM) compared to the LG11 mAb, towards the immunizing antigen (DQB1*0601/70-90) and was able to block the proliferation of T cells cultured from PBLs of MG-patients typed DQB1*0601. The scFv was also capable of binding a variant MG-associated allele (DQB1*0502/70-90) with moderate affinity (18.7 nM), a feature that was absent in the LG11. To our knowledge, this is the first report of humanizing a MG-associated human leukocyte antigen (HLA) scFv for preclinical studies.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge Prof. Carlos F. Barbas III (The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA) for providing pComb3XSS vector; Dr. Minako Oshima for providing anti-DQB1*0601 mAb, synthetic peptides, and reagents for T cell assay; and Dr. Philip Deitiker for technical help with beta counter. Additionally, the authors would like to thank Dr. Timothy Palzkill and Dr. Zhizeng Sun for allowing us to use their Biacore instrument and providing useful suggestions during analysis. The authors appreciate the assistance of Dr. Sushrut Arora with the proof-reading and scientific editing.

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  1. B. Vijayalakshmi Ayyar

    Present address: Department of Molecular Virology and Microbiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

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  1. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    B. Vijayalakshmi Ayyar & M. Zouhair Atassi

  2. Department of Pathology and Immunology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, 77030, USA

    M. Zouhair Atassi

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Procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Board of Baylor College of Medicine. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

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Blood samples were obtained from patients with the clinical diagnosis of generalized myasthenia. A written informed consent was obtained from the patients, which was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Baylor College of Medicine.

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Ayyar, B., Atassi, M. Development of humanized scFv antibody fragment(s) that targets and blocks specific HLA alleles linked to myasthenia gravis. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 101, 8165–8179 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8557-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-017-8557-1

Keywords

  • Myasthenia gravis
  • Antibody engineering
  • Antibody humanization
  • scFv
  • Biacore
  • Expression optimization