| Summary: | Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is one of several sub-types of B-cell lymphomas. The malignancy is very aggressive and average survival time is short. The hallmark of MCL is over expression of cyclin D1, however about 15% of all MCL cases do not display this over expression and are easily misdiagnosed. Recently the transcription factor Sox11 has been shown to be specifically over expressed in the nucleus of MCL-tumour cells, and polyclonal rabbit anti-Sox11 antibodies have been used to successfully identify MCL in both cyclin D1 positive and negative cases. Howev-er, human recombinant MCL-specific antibodies as have several advantages over these polyclonal rabbit antibodies; they can easily be produced in large quantities in vitro, their specificity is constant from batch to batch and they can possibly be used for therapeutic purposes. Because of this, it is desirable to produce human recombinant antibodies against proteins over expressed in MCL. In this study human recombinant IgGs have been produced towards two pro-teins over expressed in MCL, Sox11 and KIAA0882. This was done by cloning of single chain variable fragments (scFvs), previously selected from a large scFv library through phage display selection against Sox11- and KIAA0882-protein epitope signature tag (PrEST), into vectors containing human IgG constant regions followed by expression of human IgG antibodies in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells. One IgG clone for each antigen was shown to be functional and specific. Both clones were shown to have overlapping binding epitopes with their polyclonal rabbit antibody counterpart (rabbit anti-Sox11/KIAA0882) through competitive ELISA. The anti-Sox11 IgG was able to detect two bands in cell lysate in Western blot, of which one probably is Sox11 while the other band possibly could be Sox4. However, this needs to be confirmed in future experiments. The affinity of the anti-Sox11 IgG was measured in Biacore and compared to the affinity of its original scFv. This gave a rough estimation of the affinities, but the values are unreliable and the measurements need to be redone. Although more work has to be put into evaluating the potential of the produced IgGs, they compose a promising starting point to an improved understanding and improved diagnosis of MCL.
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