A mammalian expression system for high throughput antibody screening

We describe herein a method to enable high throughput (HTP) screening of libraries of soluble proteins such as phage-derived clones of IgG, scFv-Fc, or other Fc-fusion proteins expressed in mammalian cells via adenovirus transduction. DNA fragments of antibody single chains (scFvs) and fragment antigen-binding (Fabs) from the positive clones of the third round of bacteriophage panning against a target antigen were batch reformatted into scFv-Fc or IgG in an oriP bearing entry vector and then recombined to an adenovirus vector through Gateway technology. The resulting antibody gene-containing adenovirus libraries were added to 96-well plates seeded with mammalian cells at a ratio of 0.7 infectious viral particles per well to establish clonality. Protocol optimization improved the expression of scFv-Fc and IgGs up to 100 μg/mL in 96-well plates, which is sufficient for most antibody characterizations. In addition, 78% of the wells that were positive for protein expression contain only one sequence, indicating successful establishment of clonality in a majority of wells. We have established and optimized a mammalian expression system that produces soluble protein variants in a HTP manner. The system will facilitate developing multiple downstream screening methodologies.