Isolation of antigen-specific alpaca (Lama pacos) VHH antibodies by biopanning. Vicugna pacos

VHH antibodies are derived from the antigen binding domain of camelid dimeric heavy chain antibodies and have several advantages for clinical and industrial applications such as high solubility, resistance against aggregation and high renaturation after thermal denaturation. A VHH phage display library was constructed from cDNA of B cells collected after immunization of an alpaca with the N-terminal fragment of IZUMO1 protein as a model antigen. DNA sequence variation of the VHH phage display library before and after biopanning was analyzed by using Illumna Miseq. The aim of this study is to isolate an antigen specific VHH antibodies by using combination of the phage display biopanning and the next generation DNA sequencing analysis. This method is widely applicable for any other antigens of interest.