title: Nanobodies and their potential applications.
abstract: Nanobodies are recombinant, antigen-specific, single-domain, variable fragments of camelid heavy chain-only antibodies. The innate supremacy of nanobodies as a renewable source of affinity reagents, together with their high production yield in a broad variety of expression systems, minimal size, great stability, reversible refolding and outstanding solubility in aqueous solutions, and ability to specifically recognize unique epitopes with subnanomolar affinity, have combined to make them a useful class of biomolecules for research and various medical diagnostic and therapeutic applications. This article speculates on a number of technological innovations that might be introduced in the nanobody identification platform to streamline the generation of more potent nanobodies and to expand their application range.
authors.affiliation: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Research group Cellular & Molecular Immunology, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Gholamreza
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Hassanzadeh-Ghassabeh
authors.forename: Nick
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Devoogdt
authors.forename: Pieter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: De Pauw
authors.forename: Cécile
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Vincke
authors.forename: Serge
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Muyldermans
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000379:methods; D003952:Diagnostic Imaging / Q000379:methods; D006801:Humans; D050997:Nanomedicine / Q000379:methods; D061905:Single-Domain Antibodies / Q000032:analysis / Q000276:immunology / Q000627:therapeutic use*
chemical_list: D061905:Single-Domain Antibodies