Isolation of human single chain variable fragment antibodies against specific sperm antigens for immunocontraceptive development.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Contraceptive vaccines can provide valuable alternatives to current methods of contraception. We describe here the development of sperm-reactive human single chain variable fragment (scFv) antibodies of defined sperm specificity for immunocontraception.

Methods

Peripheral blood leukocytes (PBL) from antisperm antibody-positive immunoinfertile and vasectomized men were activated with human sperm antigens in vitro, and the complementary DNA prepared and PCR-amplified using primers based on all the variable regions of heavy and light chains of immunoglobulins. The scFv repertoire was cloned into pCANTAB5E vector to create a human scFv antibody library.

Results

Panning of the library against specific sperm antigens yielded several clones, and the four strongest

SUBMITTER: Samuel AS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2902835 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature