Transient plant production of Salmonella Typhimurium diagnostic antibodies

Kopertekh, Lilya; Meyer, Torsten; Freyer, Cornelia; Hust, Michael

The main goal of this study was to evaluate a feasibility of transient expression system based on the movement-deficient PVX vector supplemented with the gb silencing suppressor for the production of the TM43-E10 recombinant antibody. Two TM43-E10 antibody formats, namely single chain variable fragment (scFv) and scFv fused to the lgG Fc moiety (scFv-Fc), were designed, expressed in N. benthamiana and functionally characterized. The scFv is a smallest of the recombinant antibody formats, which is capable of antigen binding. It consists only of the variable (V) antibody regions (VL and VH) connected with a short linker peptide. The scFv-Fc fragment combines the VL, VH and Fc regions of the IgG. The scFv-Fc format might offer several advantages over the phage display-derived scFv, including bivalent binding, longer half-life and Fc-mediated effector functions [12] . Smaller antibody fragments have several advantages such as possible application of different antibody generation systems for selection/design, easier production and full antigen binding capacity of IgG [12, [27] [28] [29] .