vh domain Single domain antibodies represent the smallest antibody that was proven of diagnostic and therapeutic usefulness. They are antibody fragments that engineered from single monomeric variable domains of either camelids’ heavy-chain antibody (V H H) or cartilaginous fishes’ IgNAR (V NAR ). On the other hand, it is also possible to develop single domain antibodies from camelized human antibodies.

In particular, single domain antibodies combine the benefits of conventional antibodies with important features of small molecule drugs. They are able to bind to hidden epitopes that are not accessible to whole antibodies. In addition, in comparison with small molecule drugs that target enzyme active sites and receptor clefts, single domain antibodies have the potential of greater affinity and selectivity, thus promising lower side effect and better efficacy. Furthermore, because of their small size (they are only 1/10 the size of a whole antibody), single domain antibodies can penetrate tissues faster than other antibodies and even break through the blood-brain barrier (BBB), which turns them into excellent candidates for central nervous system disease therapies. Single domain antibodies have higher stability during the changes of temperature and chemical environments and great potential for gastrointestinal stability and oral availability. Also, thanks to its simple nature of a single-chain peptide, single domain antibodies have exceptional drug format flexibility and allow efficient drug discovery and development.

Construction of Immunized Single Domain Antibody Library In terms of the advanced phage display technology, Creative Biolabs has unparalleled capabilities for the construction of V H H or V NAR based single domain antibody libraries through immunized camel, llama, alpaca or shark. In comparison with naïve libraries, immune libraries usually produce antibodies of greater affinity, thus avoiding time-consuming in vitroantibody affinity maturation effort. Antibodies from naïve libraries frequently require affinity maturation before they are useful due to affinity issues. Furthermore, in comparison with naïve libraries, which usually require a size of 1-10 billion independent clones to be useful, an immune library can be much smaller. Our experience showed that immune libraries with a size of 1-10 million variants could be sufficient to produce excellent antibodies.