Antibody Engineering

Roland Kontermann obtained his PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Heidelberg. After working as a postdoc in the laboratory of Sir Gregory Winter at the MRC Centre for Protein Engineering, Cambridge, UK, he was a group leader at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Tumor Biology of the University of Marburg, and subsequently Head of Research at vectron therapeutics AG. Since 2004 he is Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Institute of Cell Biology and Immunology of the University of Stuttgart. Current research focuses on the development of recombinant bispecific and bifunctional antibody molecules, including half-life extension strategies, and targeted nanoparticulate carrier systems for tumor therapy. He has over 60 scientific publications and co-editor (together with Stefan Dübel) of the Antibody Engineering Lab Manual.

Stefan Dübel received his PhD at the Center for Molecular Biology Heidelberg and spent his post-doc at the German Cancer Research Center with research on the development of antibody display libraries. In the following years, he substantially participated in the invention of recombinant antibody phage display technology, as well as other recombinant antibody technologies and the development of various antibody fusion proteins. In 1996, he moved to the University of Heidelberg to establish the antibody engineering group at the Institute of Molecular Genetics. After holding a group leader position at the University of Heidelberg from 1996, Stefan Dübel went to the Biological Faculty of the Technical University of Braunschweig as a full professor in 2002. Here, he currently serves as head of the Department of Biotechnology in Braunschweig and managing director of the Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology. He has co-authored more than 90 scientific papers, 17 patents, as well as two acknowledged textbooks in the field of recombinant antibodies. He is also board member of scientific journals and the biotech industry.

50 chapters describing protocols in the following areas (Part titles): Introduction.- Generation of recombinant antibodies from hybridoma.- Generation of antibody libraries.- Isolation of antibody fragments from combinatorial libraries.- Expression and purification of antibody fragments in bacteria.- Expression and purification of antibody fragments in eukaryotic cells.- Determination of affinities.- Sequence and structure analysis and modelling epitope mapping.- In vivo experiments.- Affinity maturation of antibody fragments.- Humanisation of antibody fragments.- Antibody engineering to improve stability.- Bivalent and bispecific antibody fragments.- Recombinant antibody-fusion proteins.- Intracellular targeting of antibody fragments.The complete table of contents can be found on the Internet: http://www.springer.de