ABSTRACT
Phage display has proven to be an ideal technology for use in antibody engineering. The method has been used for affinity maturation of natural antibodies, and also, for humanization of murine antibodies (Chapter 14). In addition, large libraries from immunized donors (Chapter 15) or from naı¨ve natural repertoires (Chapter 16) have been used as valuable resources for antibodies with novel functions. However, while these applications use phage display for in vitro selection and optimization, they nonetheless rely on a natural source of antibody diversity. A particularly promising branch of antibody engineering research has focused on the design and application of synthetic antibody libraries, that is, libraries in which
the diversity is derived from man-made sources, rather than from natural repertoires.
