Expression of Antibody Fragments in Transgenic Plants

Plants are attractive systems for the expression of full-length antibodies and also for antibody derivatives such as scFvs, diabodies, camelid VHH and minibodies. For ‘Molecular Pharming’ ER retention of antibody fragments has been turned out to be the method of choice for production in leaves as well as in potato tubers and seeds. Various methods have been developed to select and characterize specific and high affine recombinant antibodies against target antigens in plant cells. The necessary technology to accumulate specific antibodies in specific cell compartments or in a plant organ of choice is generally available. Standard methods for expression of recombinant antibody fragments and for their physical and functional characterization are described in this chapter.