Antibody Serum Screening for Vaccine Efficacy and Autoimmune Disease Diagnosis

Screening antibodies in the blood is an excellent application of the array reader technology which allows many antigen proteins to be printed and for whole serum screening. Flowing the serum over the surface of the array after an immunisation event enables information on the affinity of the antibodies formed to the target antigens in the vaccine to be derived. This screening procedure is used to assess the efficacy of a particular vaccine or delivery system such as the novel nanovaccine technology. The specific binding to the antigen occurs in the Fab regions (see figure) but the immune protection also depends on the Fc region at the lower end of the molecule. We have been developing assays using the interaction of the Fc region with the bacterial proteins Protein A/G which bind these regions specifically.

With both the Fab affinity and cross-reactivity screening and the Fc region Protein A/G we are able to provide a characterisation of both important ends of the antibody.

Aims and Objectives

The project is measuring the concentration of specific antibodies in serum following a vaccination event to determine their affinities for the target immunogenic proteins. Purified antibodies can also be screened for their Fab region affinity to their target proteins and cross-reactivity towards a panel of other proteins. The Fc region affinity for Protein A/G can also be determined to characterise Fab and Fc affinities of antibodies.

  • Antibody screening for autoimmune diseases
  • Antibody cross-reactivity screening
  • Antibody Fab affinity screening
  • Antibody Fc affinity screening for the interaction with protein A/G

Reference

Olkhov RV, Parker R, Shaw AM
Whole blood screening of antibodies using label-free nanoparticle biophotonic array platform. Biosens Bioelectron 36(1):1-5 Jun 2012


Antibody Serum Screening for Vaccine Efficacy and Autoimmune Disease Diagnosis

Antibody Serum Screening for Vaccine Efficacy and Autoimmune Disease Diagnosis

Figure 1. RASMOL Image of an IgG showing the upper Fab regions and the lower Fc region.

Figure 1. RASMOL Image of an IgG showing the upper Fab regions and the lower Fc region.


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