catELISA: A facile general route to catalytic antibodies

Dan S. Tawfik, Bernard S. Green*, Rachel Chap, Michael Sela, Zelig Eshhar

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

138 Scopus citations

Abstract

The low abundance and activity of catalytic antibodies are major obstacles to their selection from the virtually unlimited repertoire of antibody binding sites. The requirement for new screening methodologies is further emphasized by the availability of combinatorial libraries, in which a functional polypeptide has to be selected out of millions of possibilities. We present a simple and sensitive screening approach (termed catEIJSA) based on immobilized substrates and immunodetection of the end product of the catalyzed reaction. The feasibility of catELISA is demonstrated here by the generation of potent ester-hydrolyzing antibodies by direct screening of hybridoma supernatants. We show that this approach is not only facile but general: it is not limited by type of reaction, substrate, or catalyst (enzymes, catalytic antibodies, chemical catalysts). catELISA opens a route to catalytic antibodies that replaces existing lengthy and arduous methods, thus allowing us to expand their number and improve their quality and to address questions that would otherwise be difficult to answer.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)373-377
Number of pages5
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume90
Issue number2
StatePublished - 15 Jan 1993

Keywords

  • Biocatalyst
  • Direct screening
  • Enzyme mimic
  • Ester hydrolysis
  • Immunoassay

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