Phage antibodies against heat shock proteins as tools for in vitro cancer diagnosis

Abstract

Despite the decades of research, cancer causes millions of deaths every year. Therefore, the development of methods for the indication of tumor markers is very relevant. Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are important for oncogenesis and malignant progression and are a marker of cancer development. Here, HSP-specific antibodies were prepared by using a nonimmune human scFv phage library. A dot immunoassay and an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with selected recombinant antibodies were used to determine HSPs in the blood sera of diseased animals. The minimum detectable HSP concentration was 0.015 μg/mL. Thus, HSP-specific phage antibodies are promising for use as sensitive markers in in vitro cancer diagnostics.

Keywords

• Phage display
• Oncology
• Detection
• Markers
• Heat shock proteins
• Diagnostics