Antibody engineering

Antibodies are unique in their high affinity and specificity for a binding partner, a quality that has made them one of the most useful molecules for biotechnology and biomedical applications. The field of antibody engineerin g has changed rapidly in the past 10 years, fueled by novel technologies fo r the in vitro isolation of antibodies from combinatorial libraries and the ir functional expression in bacteria. This review presents an overview of t he methods available for the de novo generation of human antibodies, for en gineering antibodies with increased antigen affinity, and for the productio n of antibody fragments. Select applications of recombinant antibodies are also presented.