Immune Antibody Libraries: Manipulating The Diverse Immune Repertoire for Antibody Discovery

Background: Antibody phage display is highly dependent on the availability of antibody libraries. There are several forms of libraries depending mainly on the origin of the source materials. There are three major classes of libraries, mainly the naïve, immune and synthetic libraries. Methods: Immune antibody libraries are designed to isolate specific and high affinity antibodies against disease antigens. The pre-exposure of the host to an infection results in the production of a skewed population of antibodies against the particular infection. Results: This characteristic takes advantage of the in vivo editing machinery to generate bias and specific immune repertoire. The skewed but diverse repertoire of immune libraries has been adapted successfully in the generation of antibodies against a wide range of diseases. Conclusion: We envisage immune antibody libraries to play a greater role in the discovery of antibodies for diseases in the near future. Keywords: Antibodies, antibody libraries, immune repertoire, phage display, therapeutic antibodies.