The implications of llamas for antibody discovery

The llama is the unofficial mascot

We took the llamas on a tour of our office campus in South San Francisco to bring our team together to learn more about llamas and to remind us that the biopharmaceutical team is using an important tool to discover new antibodies – the synthetic library of antibody sequences from camelidae, which includes llamas and alpacas

In addition to the team in South San Francisco, our colleagues in Boston also relied on camels to discover antibodies

Single-stranded vs.

When most people think of antibodies, most people probably think of traditional immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies (left,

Camels produce VHH antibodies (above, right), also known as single-domain antibodies, which have only heavy chains and variable domains of VHH

Although VHH antibodies themselves can be developed as therapeutic candidates, their modular nature is particularly suitable for the construction of bispecific and multispecific antibodies that are ideal for the development of next-generation therapies for cancer, autoimmune and viral diseases

Build a VHH antibody library

The Twist Biopharma team has developed a library of VHH antibodies, each containing up to 10 billion antibodies

VHH antibody libraries include

▪ VHH Ratio – a synthetic oligonucleotide pool

Because VHH antibodies are able to bind to hard-to-reach targets and have high affinity, they have great potential to be developed into drug candidates in their own right, or as a generic component to develop bispecific or multispecific antibodies for the treatment