VHH Formats
What’s a VHH or a single domain antibody (sdAb)?
VHHs are single-domain antibodies derived from camelids that provide access to challenging epitopes while offering exceptional stability and engineering flexibility.
Why choose VHH as the format for discovery?
VHHs can be readily engineered into a wide variety of therapeutic and diagnostic formats while retaining their unique structural advantages. Other potential advantages of the VHH format includes:
- Versatility – They can be used in mutliple formats for a wide range of applications
- Access to hidden epitope due to their size and CDR geometry
- Efficient production
- Ideal building blocks for bispecific and multispecific antibodies
- Compatible with computational engineering
Being an inherently unique format, we offer two pipelines for VHH discovery as described below, one of which is only offered for VHH campaigns.
VHH Pipelines
Immune Biosolutions offers two VHH discovery pipelines descibed below
Therapeutic Pipeline for Refined Affinity
Why choose immunization for VHH discovery?
For the discovery of high-affinity, high-specificity antibodies that do not require further affinity maturation, recapitulating in vivo affinity maturation through immunization remains the gold standard. For this purpose, our therapeutic pipeline is the right choice.
For antibodies destined to therapeutic application, VHH must bind their targets with sufficient affinity to remain effective at the concentrations achieved in vivo. High affinity generally translates into improved target occupancy, greater potency, and less frequent dosing, making it a critical attribute for many therapeutic applications.
Alpacas Immunization
Alpaca-derived antibody discovery campaigns use whole blood as the starting material for immune library generation. The volume and timing of blood collection can be tailored to the specific requirements of each project. Visit our immunization section to learn more about our offer.
Synthetic Pipeline for a Rapid Start Campaign
Why choose the synthetic pipeline?
Fast-start for any target
Synthetic VHH libraries provide immediate access to highly diverse repertoires without the need for animal immunization. Additionnally, discovery campaign with a single synthetic library is applicable to virtually any target, including toxic or weakly immunogenic antigens.
Developability focused
Unlike immune repertoires, synthetic libraries are intentionally designed with developability in mind. Using a common, optimized framework allows every candidate to inherit favorable expression and stability characteristics while CDR diversification generates the binding diversity required for target recognition.
What about affinity?
Although synthetic libraries offer speed, flexibility, and engineered developability, they do not recapitulate the in vivo affinity maturation process. Consequently, the highest-affinity therapeutic candidates are often obtained following one or more rounds of in vitro affinity maturation.
For more details on our in vitro affinity maturation pipelines, please visit our affinity maturation page and contact us to discuss your custom pipeline.
Selection Methods
Depending on your targets and the needs of your specific projects, selection can be done by phage or yeast display. For more details on each method, have a look at our antibody selection page.
Phage Display
Yeast Display
