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VHH antibodies: emerging reagents for the analysis of environmental chemicals

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Abstract

A VHH antibody (or nanobody) is the antigen binding fragment of heavy chain only antibodies. Discovered nearly 25 years ago, they have been investigated for their use in clinical therapeutics and immunodiagnostics, and more recently for environmental monitoring applications. A new and valuable immunoreagent for the analysis of small molecular weight environmental chemicals, VHH will overcome many pitfalls encountered with conventional reagents. In the work so far, VHH antibodies often perform comparably to conventional antibodies for small molecule analysis, are amenable to numerous genetic engineering techniques, and show ease of adaption to other immunodiagnostic platforms for use in environmental monitoring. Recent reviews cover the structure and production of VHH antibodies as well as their use in clinical settings. However, no report focuses on the use of these VHH antibodies to detect small environmental chemicals (MW < 1500 Da). This review article summarizes the efforts made to produce VHHs to various environmental targets, compares the VHH-based assays with conventional antibody assays, and discusses the advantages and limitations in developing these new antibody reagents particularly to small molecule targets.

Overview of the production of VHHs to small environmental chemicals and highlights of the utility of these new emerging reagents

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Basic Research Program, P42 ES04699, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety 2U54 OH007550, and the CounterACT Program, National Institutes of Health Office of the Director, and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, grant number U54 NS079202. C.B. was supported by the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Core Center P30 ES023513. Z.L.X. was supported by the China Scholarship Council Project 201508440069.

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  1. Department of Entomology and Nematology and UCD Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of California Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA, 95616, USA

    Candace S. Bever, Jie-Xian Dong, Natalia Vasylieva, Bogdan Barnych, Yongliang Cui, Zhen-Lin Xu, Bruce D. Hammock & Shirley J. Gee

  2. Department of Oral Biology, School of Dental Medicine, University of Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, 14214, USA

    Yongliang Cui

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  1. Candace S. Bever
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Research involving animals was reviewed and approved by the University of California Davis Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.

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Published in the topical collection Immunoanalysis for Environmental Monitoring and Human Health with guest editors Shirley J. Gee, Ivan R. Kennedy, Alice Lee, Hideo Ohkawa, Tippawan Prapamontol, and Ting Xu.

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Bever, C.S., Dong, JX., Vasylieva, N. et al. VHH antibodies: emerging reagents for the analysis of environmental chemicals. Anal Bioanal Chem 408, 5985–6002 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-016-9585-x

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