Thiocyanate elution measurement of relative affinity of phage antibodies.

Human antibodies generated by phage antibody technology have been widely used in the immunotherapy of various diseases. Among the characteristics of these therapeutic antibodies, affinity is one of the most important determinants of their biological efficacy. The binding of an antibody and its corresponding antigen could be disrupted by thiocyanate solution of different concentrations, depend upon the affinity of the antibody. This mechanism has been adopted to determine the relative affinity of monoclonal or polyclonal antibodies in routine immunological practice. Correlation between the elution method and other techniques that measure the affinity such as equilibrium dialysis and biospecific interaction analysis (BIA) has been established. Here we describe the applications of the thiocyanate elution method in the determination of the relative affinity index (RAI) of phage antibodies (Phabs). Five clone antibodies, including 3 clones of anti-keratin antibodies (AK1, AK2 and AK3) and 2 clones of anti-HBsAg antibodies (HB1 and HB2) were selected to express Phabs and Fabs, and the RAI were determined by ELISA after thiocyanate elution. A HRP-conjugated anti-M13 was used as secondary antibody for Phabs and HRP-goat-anti-human Fab was used for Fabs. The affinity ranks of the Phabs were compared with that of the Fab fragments. The results showed that all the Phabs tested were tolerant to thiocyanate treatment. The relative affinity rank of 5 Phabs coincided well with that of their corresponding Fabs. We conclude that the thiocyanate elution can be used as an easy and rapid method to measure and compare the relative affinity of Phabs.