MorphoSys' Antibodies by Design Establishes Antibody Series in Partnership with Japanese Kazusa DNA Research Institute

Antibodies by Design, a Division of MorphoSys AG, Munich, announced today results of a research & development program with renowned Japanese Kazusa DNA Research Institute, Kisarazu.

The two parties have jointly developed and characterized a series of recombinant research antibodies from MorphoSys's HuCAL GOLD® antibody library. The antibodies are directed against proteins sourced from Kazusa's mKIAA cDNA cloning and expression project, which aims at identifying and characterizing previously unidentified genes and their corresponding proteins. Both parties share distribution rights and have made these antibodies available via the sales catalogs of the Kazusa Institute and MorphoSys's group.

As part of the collaboration, researchers of the Kazusa Institute and the Antibodies by Design unit have compared the antibodies from MorphoSys's in vitro antibody technology HuCAL GOLD® with traditionally produced rabbit-derived antibodies produced against a set of the same targets. The range of characteristics analyzed included production timelines, antigen requirements and performance in typical antibody applications, such as western blot analysis or immunohistological staining of tissue preparations. The data, which are now published in the peer-review journal "Proteomics", demonstrate that recombinant antibodies offer clear benefits over polyclonal antibodies, such as faster generation, less use of antigen, much higher specificity, no loss in sensitivity, and finally increasing the range of applications by engineering the recombinant antibodies. In addition, recombinant antibodies could be used to specifically localize the analyzed proteins in tissue preparations, whereas the rabbit antibodies could be used under restricted conditions due to non-specific immunoreactions.

Since December 2001 the researchers of the Kazusa Institute have been conducting a project to isolate and determine entire sequences of 2,000 mouse KIAA cDNA clones (length;>4 kb) which encode polypeptides corresponding to human KIAA proteins. The ultimate goal of this project is the elucidation of the functions of KIAA proteins. The researchers of the Kazusa Institute established a system utilizing the in vitro recombination-assisted method and shotgun clones that were generated during the sequencing of mouse KIAA cDNAs (DNA Res. 2003, 10, 129-136). Using the method, the researchers successfully produced and purified 2,000 antigens for production of mKIAA antibodies and also 1,500 rabbit antibodies to date. "Proteomic studies require the rapid generation of specific and high-affinity antibodies against a large number of proteins that are present usually only in sub-mg quantities - something that is difficult to achieve with traditional immunization strategies," comments

Dr. Achim Knappik, Senior Director of R&D at Antibodies by Design. "The use of high-throughput recombinant in vitro antibody technologies offers a solution to this problem, which is underlined by the results obtained in this systematic study."