Phage display work-around
Cambridge Antibody Technology Group plc and MorphoSys AG have been engaged in a bitter court battle over rights to the creation of antibodies using phage display. While the parties may yet decide to cross-license, another possibility is for one or both of the companies to circumvent the existing technology platform. One potential technology is ribosomal display.
In phage display, bacteria are infected with phage DNA and DNA encoding an antibody. These transformed bacteria then produce large numbers of identical phages, each expressing the antibody on its surface. Phage display libraries are created by repeating this process with different antibody DNA molecules. To select a desired antibody from the library, the whole library is introduced to a target antigen. The antibody binding to the antigen is isolated and reinserted into bacteria, where the antibody DNA can be isolated and sequenced, revealing the identity of the antibody. ...