Antibody Discovery Using Phage Display

Automated solutions to increase workflow efficiency of your phage display

Phage display steps

Step 1: Panning

Panning is an iterative process for enriching phage within a population that possess high affinity binding to a target of interest compared to others. Begin by enriching your population of phage with high-affinity binding by exposing the library to your antigen of choice and then eluting and amplifying only those with the highest binding affinity.
 

Step 2: Colony picking 

Bacteriophage selected from the previous step are then cloned and picked in order to isolate each unique protein binder.
 

Step 3: Ag-antibody interactions 

During panning, phages displaying proteins with higher binding affinity are selected in relation to phages displaying lower affinity proteins. This qualitative selection process requires validation using more quantitative immunoassays to assess antibody-antigen interactions such as ELISA, immunofluorescence, HTRF, complement fixation, agglutination, and/or precipitation.
 

Step 4: Functional screening

Following the characterization of antibody-antigen interactions, candidate molecules are then screened for functional activity (e.g. viral neutralization or vaccine efficacy), often using cell-based assays.