Antibody repertoires developed through in vitro immunization. These technologies permit an analysis of the antibody repertoire found in non-immune individuals. Such repertoires may not necessarily be identical to immune repertoires as shown e.g. by the prefered detection of antibodies against an epitope of HIV-1 gp41 which is not highly immunogenic in vivo. Furthermore, these technologies allow development of antibodies which are not immunogenic in vivo or which are difficult to access because of a lack of suitable immune B cells. Consequently, these methods allow access to antibody reagents which are not easily available by other means.
Antibody reactivities specific for digoxin.
Human IgM monoreactive antibodies specific for digoxin-like molecules have been developed. These antibodies demonstrate that the non-immune human antibody repertoire contains highly specific antibodies although these display low affinity for their antigen. Not only do these antibodies display no crossreactivity with a number of antigens known to be recognized by multireactive antibodies, but they are also able to recognize the antigen in different ways as shown by their different crossreactivities with different digoxin-related molecules. The variable region sequences of these antibodies are available from GenBank. Immunology 74, 50-54.