Screening of inhibitory monoclonal antibodies. A critical step for producing anti-idiotypic catalytic antibodies.

In accord with the original approach that we proposed, catalytic antibodies may be produced by using the anti-idiotypic pathway according to antigen/antibody complementarity rules. The generation and screening of the idiotypic Ab1, the central point on which are anchored the interactions with both the antigen (enzyme) and the anti-idiotypic abzyme, represent a crucial step for the success of this approach. We herein propose to describe a strategy for which we have developed a number of assays, aiming at selecting the proper Ab1, with desired features, likely to elicit an anti-idiotypic catalytic antibody. beta-Lactamase from Bacillus cereus was chosen as the example illustrating our arguments.