Simultaneous, integrated selection and evolution of antibody/protein performance and expression in production hosts

1. A method of evolution and manufacture of an antibody in a CHO cell production host; the method comprising the steps of:

a. selecting a full-length template antibody;

b. evolving the template antibody to enable production of a set of mutant antibodies in the CHO cell production host;

c. screening the mutant antibodies for at least one predetermined property, characteristic or activity;

d. selecting an up-mutant antibody from the set of mutant antibodies based upon optimization of the at least one predetermined property, characteristic or activity as compared to a same property, characteristic or activity of the template antibody; and

e. manufacturing the up-mutant antibody in the CHO cell production host.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the screening step comprises

creating a functional map wherein the functional map is used to identify positions and mutations in the mutant polypeptide which result in an up-mutant and/or a silent mutation compared to the template polypeptide.

3. The method of claim 1 , wherein step a is preceded by steps comprising:

a1. generating an anti-antigen antibody library in the CHO cell production host with antibody cell surface display;

a2. screening the library for at least one predetermined property, characteristic or activity; and

wherein the full-length template antibody is selected from the library.

4. The method of claim 1 , wherein the evolving step comprises enabling production of a set of mutant antibodies formed from the template antibody having m complementarity determining regions, wherein m is an integer 1 to 6, each said complementarity determining region comprising n amino acid residues, the method comprising:

generating m×n separate sets of antibodies, each set comprising member antibodies having X number of different predetermined amino acid residues at a single predetermined position of the complementarity determining regions; wherein each set of antibodies differs in the single predetermined position; and the number of different member antibodies generated is equivalent to m×n×X.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein m is 6.

6. The method of claim 1 , wherein the evolving step b comprises

h. generating n−1 separate sets of mutant polypeptides from the template antibody, each set comprising member polypeptides having X number of different predetermined amino acid residues at a single predetermined position of the polypeptide; wherein each set of polypeptides differs in the single predetermined position; and the number of different member polypeptides generated is equivalent to [n−1]×X;

and wherein the screening step c comprises

i. assaying each member polypeptide for the at least one predetermined property, characteristic or activity;

j. identifying any change in said property, characteristic or activity of the member polypeptide relative to the template polypeptide; and

k. creating a functional map wherein the functional map is used to identify positions and mutations in the mutant polypeptide which result in an up-mutant and/or a silent mutation compared to the template polypeptide.

7. The method of claim 6 , wherein X represents the 19 naturally occurring amino acid residues not present in a given position of the template polypeptide.

8. The method of claim 6 , wherein said generating step comprises:

h1. subjecting a codon-containing polynucleotide encoding for said template polypeptide to polymerase-based amplification using a 64-fold degenerate oligonucleotide for each codon to be mutagenized, wherein each of said 64-fold degenerate oligonucleotides is comprised of a first homologous sequence and a degenerate N,N,N triplet sequence, so as to generate a set of progeny polynucleotides; and

h2. subjecting said set of progeny polynucleotides to clonal amplification such that polypeptides encoded by the progeny polynucleotides are expressed.

9. The method of claim 6 , wherein the functional map is used to identify one or more of (a) positions and mutations which do not affect the activity of the mutant polypeptide compared to the template polypeptide; (b) fully mutable sites compared to the template polypeptide; and (c) positions and mutations which result in an up-mutant compared to the template polypeptide.

10. The method of claim 1 , wherein the predetermined property, characteristic or activity is selected from reduction of protein-protein aggregation, enhancement of protein stability, increased protein solubility, introduction of glycosylation sites, introduction of conjugation sites, reduction of immunogenicity, enhancement of protein expression, increase in antigen affinity, decrease in antigen affinity, change in binding affinity, change in immunogenicity, and enhancement of specificity.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the screening steps comprise fluorescence-activated cell sorting.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein step (a) is preceded by a step comprising: selecting an antigen.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the anti-antigen antibody library is a humanized anti-antigen antibody library.