SBIR-STTR Award

Camelid single domain antibody fragments possess a number of distinctive features including a small size an elevated stability and an ability to recognize epitopes non accessible for conventional antibodiesBesides common research and immunotherapy applications camelid VHHs are also used as co crystallization chaperones protein aggregation controllers and enzyme activity tunersIn this proposal we wish to utilize these unique VHH properties as a chaperone for HIV gp expression folding and stability to improve gp protein productionIn Phase I Camelid VHH antibodies to HIV will be developed that are capable of enhancing gp expression in yeast and in mammalian cells enabling a simple model for rapid and scalable affinity purificationAt least a fold improvement in production in mammalian cell transient expression will be the basis for phase II transition. The effort in Phase II will be to develop stable VHH assisted gp protein production CHO cell lines with significant improvement in yieldGMP manufacturing cell line development and Master Cell bank generation will be performed. Following development scale up of upstream and downstream GMP processes will be completed