Transient expression and purification of chimeric heavy chain antibodies

Monoclonal antibodies have been successfully engineered as approved therapeutics. However, their large size is considered a major factor preventing them from having a more efficient tissue penetration. As the first step to establish a possibly more efficient antibody platform, we present here transient expression, purification and characterization of six chimeric heavy chain antibodies (cHCAbs), or fusion of camelid single domain antibodies (sdAbs) to human fragment crystallizable (Fc). All six HCAbs have a MW of ∼80 kDa, expressed well in a HEK293 expression system and have G0, G1 and G2 types of glycosylation. The transient expression also provided a very fast way to generate high milligram to low gram amount of proteins for in vitro assays and preliminary animal studies.