Engineered antibodies for monitoring of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons

'The long-term goal of this project is to develop antibodies and antibody-based methods for detection and recovery of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and PAH adducts that are potential biomarkers in environmental and biological samples. The inherent cross-reactivity will be exploited by pattern recognition methods. Dr. Karu''s laboratory uses new haptens representing key PAHs to derive recombinant Fab (rFab) and single-chain Fv (scFv) antibodies from hybridoma lines and combinatorial phage display libraries. Computational models of the haptens and combining sites made by Dr. Roberts''s group are used to guide antibody engineering by mutagenesis. Dr. Li''s laboratory develops enzyme immunoassays (EIAs), sensors, and immunoaffinity methods that make use of the novel haptens and antibodies for practical analytical applications in support of DOE''s mission. This report summarizes work completed in one and one-half years of a 3-year project, with close collaboration between the three research groups. Dr. Alexander Karu''s laboratory: the authors proceeded with the two strategies described in the original proposal. Site-directed mutagenesis was used to correct differences in the rFab N-terminal amino acids that were introduced by the degenerate PCR primers used for gene amplification. The binding constants of the rFabs with the corrected sequences will be compared with those of the parent MAbs, and should be very similar. The 4D5 and 10C10 heavy and light chain sequences are being moved to the pCOMB3H phagemid vector to facilitate selection of new engineered mutants.