Generation of camelid monoclonal antibodies and nanobodies

The government-funded project „camelid antibodies“ is a transfer project with 4 industrial partners. The aim of the project is the production, purification and characterisation of camelid immunoglobulins, especially heavy-chain only antibodies.

These special antibodies exhibit no light chains and are able to realize the antigen binding with only one chain. These kind of antibodies are only specified in camelids and nurse sharks so far. From a scientific and from an economic point of few these antibodies are very interesting when using the recombinant expressed nanobodies as well as the full length monoclonal antibodies. They show a higher stability then conventional murin monoclonal antibodies and have structural advantages when binding critical epitops due to the lack of the light chain. 

Aim of this project was to develop strategies that allow handling of these special antibodies on a routine base and the application in diagnostic test systems. During this project we cooperated with the companies Preclinics GmbH, 3B Pharmaceuticals GmbH, Knauer GmbH and Medipan GmbH.
For more information visit the website of our project from the federal ministry of education and research (BMBF).