Human antibody frameworks 8A7 and 16E8
Previously constructed human antibody clones, 8A7 and 16E816, were used as human antibody frameworks and negative controls in this study.
Construction of mA10 and chimeric A10 antibody expression vectors
The total RNA of mA10 hybridoma cells was extracted and purified using TRIzol™ Reagent (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 15596018) and RNeasy Mini Kit (QIAGEN, 74106). The extracted RNA was used for nested reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) using SMART cDNA Library Construction Kit (Takara, 634901) according to the manufacturer's instructions. PCR primers used in this study are listed in Supplemental Table S2. In the RT-PCR procedure, NotI and EcoRI sites were added to the 5′ and 3′ end of the mA10 genes, respectively. The PCR products were then digested with NotI and EcoRI, and the heavy and light chain genes of mA10 were inserted into pQEFIP or pQEFIN vectors16, respectively.
To construct the expression vectors of chimeric A10 antibody, the VH and VL genes of mA10 were combined with the heavy and light chain constant domain (CH, and CL, respectively) genes of 8A7, respectively. The constructed mA10 plasmids were used to amply the VH and VL genes of mA10. Previously constructed 8A7 plasmids16 were used to amplify the CH and CL genes because 8A7 has typical sequences of CH and CL for immunoglobulin gamma 1 (IgG1) and immunoglobulin kappa (Igκ), respectively. Using a PCR-based method with target specific primers (Supplemental Table S2), the expression vectors were also amplified along with the CH and CL genes for cloning, and approximately 20-nt overlaps were added to the both 5′and 3′ end of the target genes, respectively. The PCR products were then enzymatically assembled using NEBuilder HiFi DNA Assembly Master Mix (NEB, E2621L), in order to combine VH and VL genes of mA10 with the CH and CL genes of 8A7, respectively.
Construction of humanized A10 antibody expression vectors
The gene sequences of mA10, 8A7, and 16E8 were used for an NCBI IgBLAST (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/igblast/) search against IMGT database17 with default settings, in order to determine the CDRs and FRs in VH and VL genes of mA10, 8A7, and 16E8 (Fig. 1 and 2). The genes of humanized A10/8A7 and A10/16E8 antibodies were constructed by grafting the CDRs and the flanking FRs of mA10 gene onto the corresponding regions of 8A7 and 16E8 genes, respectively. The VH and VL genes of A10/8A7 and A10/16E8 were synthesized by Eurofins Genomics (Tokyo, Japan) following codon optimization. Previously constructed plasmids of 8A7 and 16E8 genes were used to amplify the CH and CL genes along with the expression vectors16. Using a PCR-based method (Supplemental Table S2), approximately 20-nt overlaps were added to the both 5’ end and 3’ end of the target genes, respectively, followed by the assembly of the PCR products described above.
Transient expression and purification of mA10, chimeric A10, and humanized A10 antibodies
The appropriate pairs of heavy and light chain expression vectors for producing mA10, chimeric A10, A10/8A7, and A10/16E8 mAbs were co-transfected into Expi293F cells using ExpiFectamine™ 293 Transfection Kit (Thermo Fisher Scientific, A14524) according to the manufacturer’s instructions. After 5 days of cell culture, the culture supernatant was collected and centrifuged twice at 2,380 × g for 5 min at room temperature and subsequently at 8,000 × g for 10 min at 4℃. The centrifugation supernatant was filtered using a 0.45 µm disc filter (Millipore, SLHV033RS), and the antibodies contained in the flow-through fraction were purified by protein G affinity chromatography using a 1 mL HiTrap Protein GHP column (Cytiva, 17040401) as previously described16. The purity of the purified antibodies was checked by sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) (Supplemental Fig. S1). The purified antibody concentration was measured using NanoDrop One (Thermo Fisher Scientific) at a wavelength of 280 nm.
ELISA
The antigen binding affinity and specificity of the purified A10/8A7 and A10/16E8 mAbs were evaluated by ELISA. Briefly, flat-bottom 96-well microtiter plates (Thermo Fisher Scientific, 167008) were coated with Recombinant Human ADAMTS13 (Full Length) Protein (R&D Systems, 6156-AD-020) at 50 ng/well, incubated overnight at 4℃, and blocked with ELISA blocking buffer (1×phosphate-buffered saline (PBS), 2% bovine serum albumin (BSA), 0.05% NaN3) at room temperature for 1 h. Three-fold serial dilutions of the mAbs from 1 µg/mL to 0.001 µg/mL in ELISA diluent (1×PBS, 1% BSA, 0.05% NaN3) were incubated in triplicate on the protein-coated wells for 1~2 h. Chimeric A10 and mA10 were used as positive controls, and 8A7 and 16E8, and mouse IgG2b-UNLB (SouthernBiotech, 1090-01) were used as negative controls for human and mouse ELISA tests, respectively. After washing the ELISA plates, human or mouse mAbs bound to the coated ADAMTS13 protein were detected by Goat Anti-Human IgG-AP (SouthernBiotech, 2040-04) or Goat Anti-Mouse IgG-AP (SouthernBiotech, 1030-04) with an alkaline phosphatase substrate (Sigma-Aldrich, S0942), respectively. The absorbance at 405 nm (A405) and 650 nm (A650) was read using a Multimode Plate Reader Enspire instrument (PerkinElmer), and A650 was subtracted from A405. The ELISA results for 16E8, mA10, and mouse IgG2b are shown as supplementary data (Supplemental Fig. S2).
SPR
To determine the kinetic parameters of the purified A10/8A7 and A10/16E8 mAbs, such as KD, SPR analyses were carried out using a Biacore T200 instrument (Cytiva). According to the manufacturer’s instructions, anti-human and anti-mouse IgG (Fc) antibodies were immobilized onto Series S Sensor Chip CM5 (Cytiva, 29104988) using Human Antibody Capture Kit (Cytiva, BR-1008-39) and Mouse Antibody Capture Kit (Cytiva, BR-1008-38), respectively, with Amine Coupling Kit (Cytiva, BR100050). All the antibodies analyzed were captured at approximately 1,000 response unit (RU). Chimeric A10 and mA10 were used as positive controls, and 8A7 and 16E8, and mouse IgG2b-UNLB (SouthernBiotech, 1090-01) were used as negative controls for SPR analyses of human and mouse antibodies, respectively. The binding curves were obtained by injecting 2-fold serial dilutions of Recombinant Human ADAMTS13 (Full Length) Protein (R&D Systems, 6156-AD-020) ranging from 80 nM to 0.625 nM in PBS containing 0.05% Tween 20 (PBS-T) (Supplemental Fig. S3 and S4). The operation parameters were as follows: temperature, 25 ℃; flow rate, 30 μL/min; contact time, 240 s; dissociation time, 900 s. The obtained binding curves of each antibody were analyzed using 1:1 binding model in Biacore T200 Evaluation Software version 2.0 (Cytiva).
ADAMTS13 inhibition assay
ADAMTS13 activity was measured by chromogenic ELISA (Kainos Inc., CY-6000)26 in triplicate. For inhibition assays, residual ADAMTS13 activity was measured after incubating normal pooled plasma with 2-fold serial dilutions of the antibodies ranging from 25 µg/mL to 0.20 µg/mL. Chimeric A10 and mA10 were used as positive controls, and 8A7 and 16E8, and mouse IgG (FUJIFILM Wako Pure Chemical Co., 140-09511) were used as negative controls for ADAMTS13 inhibition assays of human and mouse antibodies, respectively. The concentration-response relationship between antibody concentration and residual ADAMTS13 activity was fitted to a sigmoid model using R version 3.6.2 packages.
Antibody structure modeling and structural similarity analysis
The three-dimensional (3-D) structure of mA10, A10/8A7, and A10/16E8 was predicted using the locally installed Rosetta software (version 2020.37)19. Briefly, amino acid sequences of VH and VL of the antibodies were used for a BLASTp search against the PDB database, in order to generate antibody structure modeling templates. One thousand runs of antibody structure modeling were performed using the RosettaAntibody software with the generated templates, and the top 10 antibody structure models were selected according to the modeling results. The selected antibody structure models were visualized and analyzed using the UCSF Chimera27. The values of RMSD and Q-score were calculated to evaluate the structural similarity between mA10 and each of A10/8A7 and A10/16E8, where RMSD is the measure of the average distance between the Cα atoms of superimposed protein structures and Q-score is the structural similarity score ranging from 0 to 1; Q-score is 1 for completely identical or superimposed structures and decreases as the similarity decreases20. The fluctuation of the modeling results within each of antibody structure models was also evaluated by superimposing the top 10 antibody structure models of each antibody (Supplemental Table S1).