This week, it was my turn to give the short talk at our group meeting. I chose to present a recently published paper on thermostability prediction for nanobodies. The motivation for this work, at least in part, is the need for thermostability in the diverse applications of nanobodies. At OPIG, our research primarily revolves around the therapeutic uses of nanobodies, but their potential extends beyond this. I thought it would be interesting to highlight some of these broader applications here:
Continue readingTag Archives: nanobodies
VHH -vs- VNAR
As one of the group’s resident nanobody enthusiasts, on the OPIG retreat this year I presented a talk on shark VNARs, their therapeutic potential and how they differ from VHHs. Here are some of the main points covered:
Continue readingLlamas and nanobodies
Nanobodies are an exciting area of increasing interest in the biotherapeutics domain. They consist only of a heavy chain variable domain so are much smaller than conventional antibodies (about 1/10th of their mass) but despite this, manage to achieve comparable affinity for their targets, in addition to being more soluble and stable – good things come in small packages! Nanobodies are not naturally produced in humans but can be derived from camelids (VHHs) or sharks (vNARs) and then engineered to humanise them. For the rest of this blog post we will skip over the science entirely and learn how to draw a llama, a great example of a camelid species.
