Directed antibodies

Diversa Corp. is throwing its hat into the antibody generation arena, and hopes that its directed evolution technologies will produce a broader range of antibodies than are offered by mouse and phage display approaches. The company expects that the increased number of potential antibodies will save time in optimization and will offer products with pre-specified characteristics.

DVSA's aim is to mimic the two main antibody generation mechanisms of the immune system: genetic recombination and hypermutation. The company is using its directed evolution technology, which produces protein variants, and Gene Site Saturation Mutagenesis (GSSM) technology, which substitutes all codons at a given amino acid in a protein sequence...