Patent ID: 7462697

Claim:
A method for humanizing a rabbit antibody, comprising: a) identifying a variation tolerant position in a parent rabbit antibody by comparing its amino acid sequence to the amino acid sequences of a plurality of related antibodies that are obtained from the same rabbit as said parent rabbit antibody, wherein said parent antibody and said related antibodies: i. bind to the same antigen; ii. each comprise heavy chain variable domains that have an overall amino acid sequence identity of at least 90% relative to one another; iii. each comprise light chain variable domains that have an overall amino acid sequence identity of at least 90% relative to one another; iv. have H3 CDRs that are identical in length and identical in sequence except for 0, 1 or 2 amino acid substitutions relative to one another; v. have L3 CDRs that are identical in length and identical in sequence except for 0, 1 or 2 amino acid substitutions relative to one another; b) aligning the amino acid sequence of said parent rabbit antibody with the amino acid sequence of a human antibody, wherein said human antibody is one of ten human antibodies that are most homologous to said parent rabbit antibody; and c) substituting the amino acid present at said variation tolerant position with the corresponding amino acid of said human antibody to produce a humanized antibody.