title: Antibody mimetics: promising complementary agents to animal-sourced antibodies.
abstract: Despite their wide use as therapeutic, diagnostic and detection agents, the limitations of polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies have inspired scientists to design the next generation biomedical agents, so-called antibody mimetics that offer many advantages over conventional antibodies. Antibody mimetics can be constructed by protein-directed evolution or fusion of complementarity-determining regions through intervening framework regions. Substantial progress in exploiting human, butterfly (Pieris brassicae) and bacterial systems to design and select mimetics using display technologies has been made in the past 10 years, and one of these mimetics [Kalbitor® (Dyax)] has made its way to market. Many challenges lie ahead to develop mimetics for various biomedical applications, especially those for which conventional antibodies are ineffective, and this review describes the current characteristics, construction and applications of antibody mimetics compared to animal-sourced antibodies. The possible limitations of mimetics and future perspectives are also discussed.
authors.affiliation: a College of Veterinary Medicine, Northwest A&F University , Yangling , Shaanxi , China .
authors.forename: Abdul Rasheed
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Baloch
authors.affiliation: b Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics , Sindh Agriculture University , Tandojam , Pakistan , and.
authors.forename: Abdul Wahid
authors.initials: AW
authors.lastname: Baloch
authors.affiliation: c Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics, King's College London , London , UK.
authors.forename: Brian J
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Sutton
authors.affiliation: a College of Veterinary Medicine, Northwest A&F University , Yangling , Shaanxi , China .
authors.forename: Xiaoying
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D000906:Antibodies; D000911:Antibodies, Monoclonal; D001419:Bacteria; D001709:Biotechnology; D002080:Butterflies; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D015202:Protein Engineering
chemical_list: D000906:Antibodies; D000911:Antibodies, Monoclonal
keywords: Antibody mimetics; diagnostics; monoclonal antibodies (mAbs); protein engineering; therapeutics